Trade and the End of Antiquity

Johannes Boehm and Thomas Chaney

No 19459, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: What was the role of trade, and how did economic activity evolve at the End of Antiquity, when political power shifts away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe and the Middle East? To answer those questions, we assemble a database of hundreds of thousands of ancient coins from the fourth to the tenth century, estimate a dynamic model of trade and money where coins gradually diffuse along trade routes, and recover granular regional trade and real consumption time series. Our estimates suggest that Mediterranean trade was disrupted by the newly formed border between Islam and Christianity; that economic activity shifts away from the Mediterranean starting in the fifth century; that real consumption peaks in the Middle East in the eighth century; and that by the end of the ninth century, Atlantic regions from Islamic Andalusia to Frankish northwestern Europe have become the wealthiest regions of the ancient western world.

JEL-codes: F1 N73 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09
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