Mick Stringer (Reading)

Presented to the PGWiP seminar on Friday 2nd December 2011

“The Numbers Game, Ancient and Modern”
Constructing rationes from the writings of the Roman agronomists

The last decade has seen both a widening and a deepening of interest in the Roman economy, and the primitivism versus modernism debate provoked by Moses Finley in the 1970s has become altogether richer and more nuanced. Issues raised have included patterns of growth, decline and integration; the impact of state intervention through taxation and control of the money supply; the role and efficiency of the market; and the rationality of decision makers. Following the financial events of recent years and the realisation that modern economic thought (or at least the behaviour that it stimulates) does not have a monopoly (cynics would say even a trace) of rational objectivity, this last issue has excited particular interest. Perhaps, we are beginning to realise, we have more to learn from pre-capitalistic economies than has previously been conceded. Certainly any insight which they might provide on why particular decisions, right, wrong, or catastrophic, are made could be more than a little useful. By drawing on recent thought in psycho-linguistics and cognition, I am exploring whether there can ever be such a thing as objective rationalism in matters financial and economic. We must, I think, allow for the possibility that it is possibly the nature of the numbers game itself, ancient or modern, that determines what we like to think of as logical behaviour.

Read the rest of this paper in pdf format.