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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Slavery And Information, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Slavery And Information, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
This article shows how asymmetric information shaped slavery by determining the likelihood of manumission. A theoretical model explains the need to offer positive incentive to slaves working in occupations characterized by a high degree of asymmetric information. As a result, masters freed (and, more generally, rewarded) slaves who performed well. The model’s implications are then tested against the available evidence: both in Rome and in the Atlantic world, slaves with high-asymmetric-information tasks had greater chances of manumission. The analysis also sheds light on the master’s choices of carrots versus sticks and of labor versus slavery.
Luxury In Ancient Rome: Scope, Timing And Enforcement Of Sumptuary Laws, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Anna Plisecka
Luxury In Ancient Rome: Scope, Timing And Enforcement Of Sumptuary Laws, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Anna Plisecka
Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
Between 182 BC and 18 BC, Roman lawmakers enacted a series of sumptuary laws regulating banquets (including the number of guests and the consumption of specific foods). Enforcement was hardly successful and these regulations had to be reiterated over time. Traditional explanations based on morals, protection of patrimonies and electoral competition do not fully account for the scope, timing and enforcement patterns of such laws. We advance and formalize a novel hypothesis holding that sumptuary legislation originated from the misalignment between political and economic power following the military and economic expansion of Rome in the last two centuries of the …