Gross Domestic Product
See also: Roman currencyAll cited economic historians stress the point that, given the general paucity of relevant data from antiquity, any estimate can only be regarded as a rough approximation to the realities of the ancient economy.
| Unit | Goldsmith 1984 |
Hopkins 1995/1996 |
Temin 2006 |
Maddison 2007 |
Bang 2008 |
Scheidel / Friesen 2011 |
Lo Cascio / Malanima 2011 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GDP per capita | Sesterces | HS 380 | HS 225 | HS 166 | HS 380 | HS 229 | HS 260 | HS 380 |
| Wheat equivalent | 843 kg | 491 kg | 614 kg | 843 kg | 500 kg | 680 kg | 855 kg | |
| 1990 Int$ | – | – | – | $570 | – | $620 | $940 | |
| Population (Approx. year) |
55m (14 AD) |
60m (14 AD) |
55m (100 AD) |
44m (14 AD) |
60m (150 AD) |
70m (150 AD) |
– (14 AD) |
|
| Total GDP | Sesterces | HS 20.9bn | HS 13.5bn | HS 9.2bn | HS 16.7bn | HS 13.7bn | ~HS 20bn | – |
| Wheat equivalent | 46.4 Mt | 29.5 Mt | 33.8 Mt | 37.1 Mt | 30 Mt | 50 Mt | – | |
| 1990 Int$ | – | – | – | $25.1bn | – | $43.4bn | – | |
| "–" indicates unknown value. | ||||||||
- A ^ Decimal fractions rounded to the nearest tenth. Italic numbers not directly given by the authors; they are obtained by multiplying the respective value of GDP per capita by estimated population size.
Italia is considered to have been the richest region, due to tax transfers from the provinces and to the concentration of elite income in the heartland; its GDP per capita is estimated at having been around 40% to 66% higher than in the rest of the empire.
Read more about this topic: Roman Economy
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