The liberating power of entrepreneurship in ancient Athens

George Bitros () and Anastassios Karayiannis

Method and Hist of Econ Thought from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Our objectives in this paper are threefold. First, we identify the nature of entrepreneurial climate in ancient Athens. Drawing on the analyses of Athenian writers we argue that, although philosophers, politicians, and generals enjoyed greater civil and social status relative to those pursuing wealth-creating activities, ancient Athenians were not negative to efforts at making “moderate” profits that were used also for promoting the well being of the city. Second, we inquire if and to what extent the city-state of Athens (mainly during the 5th century BC) had an active policy for encouraging metics (i.e. resident aliens) and slaves to assimilate into the Athenian society through success in business. And, finally, we characterise the degree to which metics and slaves were able to take advantage of the prevailing institutional set- up in order to achieve social advancement and individual liberty. Our main conclusion is that in ancient Athens there operated a system of economic and social incentives that had been deliberately designed to promote entrepreneurial activities.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; social advancement; individual autonomy; individual liberty. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2004-11-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mhet/papers/0411/0411004.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpmh:0411004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Method and Hist of Econ Thought from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).