People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: The Evidence from Egypt

Kyle Harper

The Journal of Economic History, 2016, vol. 76, issue 3, 803-839

Abstract: The papyri of Roman Egypt provide some of the most important quantifiable data from a first-millennium economy. This paper builds a new dataset of wheat prices, land prices, rents, and wages over the entire period of Roman control in Egypt. Movements in both nominal and real prices over these centuries suggest periods of intensive and extensive economic growth as well as contraction. Across a timeframe that covers several severe mortality shocks, demographic changes appear to be an important, but by no means the only, force behind changes in factor prices.

Date: 2016
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