Financial Intermediation in the Early Roman Empire
评估早期罗马帝国金融市场的有效性，通过金融中介理论描述资金来源层级，并与18世纪西欧对比，揭示罗马经济与现代社会的相似程度及其增长前景。
I evaluate the effectiveness of financial markets in the early Roman Empire in this article. I review the theory of financial intermediation to describe a hierarchy of financial sources and survey briefly the history of financial intermediation in eighteenth-century Western Europe to provide a standard against which to evaluate the Roman evidence. I then describe the nature of financial arrangements in the early Roman Empire in terms of this hierarchy. This exercise reveals the extent to which the Roman economy resembled more recent societies and sheds light on the prospects for economic growth in the Roman Empire.