This exciting new volume examines the development of market performance from Antiquity until the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Table of Contents

• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An introduction: markets from Ancient Babylonia to the modern world - R.J. VAN DER SPEK, BAS VAN LEEUWEN AND JAN LUITEN VAN ZANDEN
• PART I Methodology
• 2 Market performance in early economies: concepts and empirics, with an application to Babylon - PETER FOLDVARI AND BAS VAN LEEUWEN
• 3 Analysis of historical time series with messy features: the case of commodity prices in Babylonia - SIEM JAN KOOPMAN AND LENNART HOOGERHEIDE
• 4 Market performance and welfare: why price instability hurts - KARL GUNNAR PERSSON
• PART II Market performance in Babylonia and the Mediterranean in antiquity
• 5 Market performance and market integration in Babylonia in the ‘long sixth century’ BC - MICHAEL JURSA
• 6 Prices and related data from northern Babylonia in the Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic periods, c. 480-300 bc - JOHANNES HACKL AND REINHARD PIRNGRUBER
• 7 Climate, war and economic development: the case of second-century BC Babylon - JOOST HUIJS, REINHARD PIRNGRUBER AND BAS VAN LEEUWEN
• 8 Mediterranean grain prices in classical antiquity - DOMINIC RATHBONE AND SITTA VON REDEN
• 9 Soldiers and booze: the rise and decline of a Roman market economy in north-western Europe - ELTJO BURINGH AND MAARTEN BOSKER
• PART III Market performance from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century
• 10 Price volatility and markets in late medieval and early modern Europe - VICTORIA N. BATEMAN
• 11 Markets and price fluctuations in England and Ireland, 1785-1913 - LIAM KENNEDY AND PETER SOLAR
• 12 Market integration in China, AD 960-1644 - LIU GUANGLIN
• 13 The organization and scope of grain markets in Qing China, 1644-1911 - CAROL H. SHIUE
• PART IV Markets and money
• 14 The circulation of coins in Syria and Mesopotamia in the sixth to first centuries BC - FRÉDÉRIQUE DUYRAT
• 15 A frog's eye view of the Roman market: the Batavian case - JORIS AARTS
• 16 The circulation of money and the behaviour of prices in medieval and early modern England - NICK MAYHEW
• 17 Money supply and the price mechanism: the interaction of money, prices and wages in Beijing in the long nineteenth century - KAIXIANG PENG
• PART V Long-term patterns
• 18 Risk aversion and storage in autarkic societies: from Babylonian times until the era of globalization - PETER FOLDVARI AND BAS VAN LEEUWEN
• 19 Growing silver and changing prices: the development of the money stock in ancient Babylonia and medieval England - R.J. VAN DER SPEK, PETER FOLDVARI AND BAS VAN LEEUWEN
• 20 Long-run patterns in market performance in the Near East, the Mediterranean and Europe from antiquity to c. AD 1800 - BAS VAN LEEUWEN, PETER FOLDVARI AND JAN LUITEN VAN ZANDEN
• PART VI Conclusion
• 21 Markets from Babylon to Belfast: some concluding remarks - R.J. VAN DER SPEK, BAS VAN LEEUWEN AND JAN LUITEN VAN ZANDEN
• Appendix: monthly prices in Babylon (grams of silver per 100 litres and per mina (0.5 kg))