Mining Gold for the Currency during the Pax Romana

John Hartwick

No 274638, Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics

Abstract: We set out a simple four sector macro model of the economy of the Roman Empire during a period of considerable economic prosperity. Our focus is on gold coins as currency and the seignor- age which the government used to fund its activities. We solve numerically for a balanced growth representation of the economy of the empire, a solution that captures the intricacies of money creation, currency expansion and seignorage. We subscribe to the view that the exhaustion of low-cost gold and silver deposits contributed significantly to the ending of the economic prosper- ity enjoyed by Roman Italy and its provinces during the so-called Pax Romana (31 BC to 165 CE) and we attempt to capture sig- nificant shifts in variables during the decline.

Keywords: Demand and Price Analysis; Financial Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50
Date: 2013-08
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:quedwp:274638

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.274638

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