The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire

(michelecoscia.com)

47 points | by mikk14 2 days ago

6 comments

  • ianbooker 2 minutes ago
    They really do a lot to correct for bias, but is it enough?

    I would suspect that a prosperous and thereby complex economy also has more resource to discover or document inscriptions. While they talk about researcher bias, they do not really mitigate this.

    And yes, I searched the article and the extensive additional material.

    Still a valuable contribution.

  • robotomir 1 hour ago
    So they estimate economic complexity by the number of discovered Latin documents or inscriptions. Wasn't Greek prevalent in the East?
    • bartnp 45 minutes ago
      No, based on the professions named within the inscriptions. If a province has relatively many professions that are rare for the WRE, then it's considered more complex. See the paper for the actual estimates, the map in the article does not show the complexity estimation
    • yorwba 1 hour ago
      Which is why the title explicitly names the Western Roman Empire, and the article briefly discusses data issues with Greek inscriptions near the end.
      • crefiz 55 minutes ago
        can't read it seems
  • robertacion 1 hour ago
    The last paragraph is a reference to Cato the Elder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

    "As a third and final action point, I am of the opinion that Carthage must be destroyed."

  • geniium 1 hour ago
    Wanted to read more on this
    • justin_dash 1 hour ago
      Same here - I suppose this article did what it was supposed to do - give a short primer introducing the topic and if you want to see how they computed this look at the paper!
  • KaseyKim 1 hour ago
    impressive
  • db48x 2 hours ago
    Server died already?