Beyond Price: Constructions of Value and the Real Estate Market in Ancient Rome

Garcia, Morcillo, M

doi:10.4324/9781003187806

Beyond Price: Constructions of Value and the Real Estate Market in Ancient Rome

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

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Routledge, 2023.

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Abstract

What do prices and judgements of value tell us about the economic mentalities and behaviour of ancient Romans? Value is a polysemic concept that essentially helps articulate and classify individual and collective choices, preferences, beliefs, and emotions. In matters concerning economic appraisals and pecuniary considerations, ancient Romans used a large variety of expressions that revealed different notions of value, but also a deep understanding of their function within and outside market relationships, including the effect on estimations of institutional constrains, and of the complex scaffolding of social norms and ethical expectations. This contribution analyses value creation in the specific context of the real estate market. The chapter discusses what ancient evidence and discourses about appraisals and pricing can tell us about the intrinsic characteristics of immovable assets, their status as favourite objectives of economic investments, their exposure to risk and uncertainty, and their heterogeneous nature as goods that could not be replaced by identical properties. Sales and other types of transfers of properties and usufruct, judicial estimations and reasoning aiming to resolve conflicts of property rights ultimately reveal to us a sophisticated, intellectual engagement with the construction of conventions and criteria of value that aimed to legitimate costs and prices.