Trade and the end of antiquity
Abstract.
What was the role of trade, and how did economic activity evolve at the End of Antiquity, when
political power shifts away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe and the Middle East?
To answer those questions, we assemble a database of hundreds of thousands of ancient coins from
the fourth to the tenth century, estimate a dynamic model of trade and money where coins gradually
diffuse along trade routes, and recover granular regional trade and real consumption time series.
Our estimates suggest that: Mediterranean trade was disrupted by the newly formed border between
Islam and Christianity; economic activity shifts away from the Mediterranean starting in the fifth
century; real consumption peaks in the Middle East in the eighth century; and by the end of the
ninth century, Atlantic regions from Islamic Spain to Frankish northwestern Europe have become
the wealthiest regions of the ancient western world.
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Interesting paper. Still going through it but it seems a bit too definitive.