The Economic Complexity of the Roman Empire
Matteo Mazzamurro, Petra Hermankova, Michele Coscia, Tom Brughmans
经济复杂性是评估现代经济体生产能力和未来增长的有力工具。然而，对于经济复杂性在历史长河中如何演变，我们知之甚少。在本文中，我们利用罗马帝国的考古证据——以耐久材料（即铭文）保存的简短文本——来估算帝国各个行省的经济复杂性。通过将铭文文本中列出的职业与铭文物品发现地点联系起来，我们可以估算出罗马帝国最初四个世纪中最复杂的地区与当今最复杂的国家之间存在显著且统计学上显著的重叠。虽然我们无法解释经济复杂性为何能够跨越时代得以保存，但这一证据表明了经济能力发展的难度。
Economic complexity is a powerful tool to estimate the productive capabilities and future growth of modern economies. Little is known of how economic complexity evolves over long periods in history. In this paper, we use archaeological evidence from the Roman Empire in the form of short texts preserved on a durable material (i.e. inscriptions) to estimate the economic complexity of the various provinces of the empire. By connecting the occupations listed in the text of inscriptions with the loca...