This major series, organised by theme, is an essential reference source in the area of Law and Economics, forming a comprehensive guide to the subject. Each volume is edited by a distinguished specialist in the field and provides an authoritative overview of the respective topic, comprising a careful selection of the most seminal and ground-breaking articles and prefaced by a new, over-arching introduction. The series outlines economic approaches to a broad range of legal sub-disciplines, from Corporate Law and Constitutional Law through to Family Law and Environmental Law, as well as examining issues such as the Methodology of Law and Economics, Behavioral Law and Economics and Law and Economic Development. It will be of immense interest to both scholars and practitioners interested in the economic implications of the law. --

Ancient Rome is the only society in the history of the western world whose legal profession evolved autonomously, distinct and separate from institutions of political and religious power. Roman legal thought has left behind an enduring legacy and exerted enormous influence on the shaping of modern legal frameworks and systems, but its own genesis and context pose their own explanatory problems. The economic analysis of Roman law has enormous untapped potential in this regard: by exploring the intersecting perspectives of legal history, economic history, and the economic analysis of law, the two volumes of Roman Law and Economics are able to offer a uniquely interdisciplinary examination of the origins of Roman legal institutions, their functions, and their evolution over a period of more than 1000 years, in response to changes in the underlying economic activities that those institutions regulated. Volume I explores these legal institutions and organizations in detail, from the constitution of the Roman Republic to the management of business in the Empire, while Volume II covers the concepts of exchange, ownership, and disputes, analysing the detailed workings of credit, property, and slavery, among others. Throughout each volume, contributions from specialists in legal and economic history, law, and legal theory are underpinned by rigorous analysis drawing on modern empirical and theoretical techniques and methodologies borrowed from economics. In demonstrating how these can be fruitfully applied to the study of ancient societies, with due deference to the historical context, Roman Law and Economics opens up a host of new avenues of research for scholars and students in each of these fields and in the social sciences more broadly, offering new ways in which different modes of enquiry can connect with and inform each other.

Ancient Rome is the only society in the history of the western world whose legal profession evolved autonomously, distinct and separate from institutions of political and religious power. Roman legal thought has left behind an enduring legacy and exerted enormous influence on the shaping of modern legal frameworks and systems, but its own genesis and context pose their own explanatory problems. The economic analysis of Roman law has enormous untapped potential in this regard: by exploring the intersecting perspectives of legal history, economic history, and the economic analysis of law, the two volumes of Roman Law and Economics are able to offer a uniquely interdisciplinary examination of the origins of Roman legal institutions, their functions, and their evolution over a period of more than 1000 years, in response to changes in the underlying economic activities that those institutions regulated. Volume II covers the concepts of exchange, ownership, and disputes, analysing the detailed workings of credit, property, and slavery, among others, while Volume I explores Roman legal institutions and organizations in detail, from the constitution of the Republic to the management of business in the Empire. Throughout each volume, contributions from specialists in legal and economic history, law, and legal theory are underpinned by rigorous analysis drawing on modern empirical and theoretical techniques and methodologies borrowed from economics. In demonstrating how these can be fruitfully applied to the study of ancient societies, with due deference to the historical context, Roman Law and Economics opens up a host of new avenues of research for scholars and students in each of these fields and in the social sciences more broadly, offering new ways in which different modes of enquiry can connect with and inform each other.

A critical element of economic performance from antiquity to the present

Were legal systems in the Roman empire conducive to economic growth and development? Were legal rules and procedure changed in response to economic needs? This book offers detailed studies to provide some answers to these basic questions.

An engaging look at how ancient Greeks and Romans crafted laws that fit--and, in turn, changed--their worlds

Scholars of economics and history often look to the ancient world for insights into the nature of civilizations and economic systems across time and space. Two approaches dominate this line of inquiry. One group of specialists investigate specific, well-documented events for which a large amount of textual or material evidence exists. The other group, generalists, seek a broader historical context than the more narrowly focused classicists and ancient historians, because this is the purpose of their own fields. This work aims to bridge the gap between specialist and generalist approaches to studying ancient law and economy. To that end, this paper will employ a hybrid strategy, using the narrow scope of the specialists (to as great a degree as is possible) in examining several different economic systems and states, which it will then use to generalize about development of ancient economies and civilizations. This work shows how the assumptions of scholars that ancient civilizations and economies are necessarily and fundamentally different from our own are an oversimplification of a much more complicated reality. This is exacerbated by the implicit difficulty of asserting that ancient economies were entirely market-based, commercial economies or entirely "human" economies: neither statement is true. Moreover, much of the scholarship on ancient economies, most recently Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years, relies on models of ancient economies, such as the temple-state hypothesis, that do not reflect more recent evidence. Then, using applications of complex adaptive systems theory to ancient civilizations and economies, this paper examines historical evidence from the ancient Near East, ancient Athens, and ancient Rome. It finds that all of the above urban systems developed mechanisms to protect property rights, to enforce contract, to lend resources through debt systems, and using these tools to engage in long-distance trade. Because these practices were economically productive, these urban systems experienced population growth, further differentiation of labor, and further social stratification. This paper argues that this growth is the result of a positive feedback loop that rewarded surplus producing urban systems with the ability to grow.