Embedded, Eclectic, Elusive: The Real Estate Market and the Roman Economy

Garcia, Morcillo, M; Rosillo-Lopez, C

doi:10.4324/9781003187806-1

Embedded, Eclectic, Elusive: The Real Estate Market and the Roman Economy

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Marta Garcia Morcillo ORCiD

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Abstract

The introduction examines the particular characteristics of immovable goods and their central role in the socioeconomic strategies and institutions that shaped notions of wealth and property rights in ancient Rome. In addition to direct transfers of properties and renting practices both in urban and rural contexts, the editors highlight the embeddedness of this singular commodity in different types of economic relationships, financial and commercial enterprises. The rich, albeit heterogenous corpus of available evidence illuminates the Romans’ deep engagement with notions of risk, security and trust, with the complex and often symbiotic relationship between profit and speculation, valuation and pricing, as well as with the challenges and limits of the state’s regulation of private affairs concerning immovables. The problems of housing and social inequalities that affected ancient, but also modern real estate markets, and the interactions between financial and non-financial motivations of actors are discussed in relationship to methodological approaches. The chapter includes an insight into contemporary debates, such as the limits of neoclassic economics, and the possibilities of applicability in studies of pre-modern societies of tools and frameworks of analysis developed from the dynamic field of economic sociology, such as economics of information and behavioural economics.