Luigi Oddo

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Department of History

This paper evaluates competing approaches to assess the effectiveness of transmission channels for the U.S. monetary policy from 1°Q 1995 to 3°Q 2019. While evaluating the competing approaches, the paper follows wavelet coherence approach providing results in time and frequency domain. The results show how money and credit channels work quite well...

This paper investigates the relationships between urbanization and long-term economic growth in the pre-industrial world. To this end, we compiled a novel dataset collecting all currently available data on urban and rural populations in an Italian pre-unification state, the Republic of Genoa. Data show the paradoxical coexistence of high urbanizati...

This paper quantitatively analyses the role of transaction costs in Northern vessels’ operating expenses versus their Mediterranean competitors between 1590 and 1616. It is based on an understudied risk-sharing institution, General Average (GA), and on data extrapolated from the AveTransRisk database and unpublished archival sources. We apply a Str...

In the last two decades, an increasing amount of papyrological findings have begun to shed more light on the demographic and economic consequences of the Antonine Plague in Roman Egypt. However, both results and conclusions on this subject remain quite controversial. This paper reinterprets the Antonine Plague’s effects on Roman Egypt within the la...

This study investigates the relation between anthropogenic lead pollution recorded in Greenland ice cores and the economic dynamics of the Early Roman Empire (27 BC - 180 AD). Our findings reveal that approximately one-fourth of the annual variability in lead pollution during this period can be explained by summer temperatures, coin output, and per...

The article aims to analyze the connections between urbanization and economic development in the pre-industrial world. To this end, a novel dataset on urbanization and population in the Republic of Genoa in the period 1300-1800 was constructed. The ‘depth’ of the dataset, which spans five centuries of urban and population development, makes it poss...

This paper critically examines the traditional perspectives on ancient economic growth, specifically the Malthusian and Smithian viewpoints, which emerged within the framework of Neo Institutional Economics (NIE). By delving into recent literature, the study highlights the limitations of these perspectives in providing a comprehensive understanding...

Did long-distance trade in the Roman world operate on a sufficiently big scale to increase the overall size of markets, enabling specialization of labor and thus Smithian growth? Although the Malthusian model represents the dominant view to describe the economic performance of the ancient world, economic theory suggests that the Smithian model coul...

This paper aims to evaluate validity of Bank-Lending Channel Revisited theory (BLCR) within a macroeconomic framework extended for diversified credit demand. The extension of BLCR model (EBLCR) relaxed assumption of credit cycle as a function of bank lending rate and enabled a more comprehensive analysis of demand for credit. In order to include a...

Did long-distance trade in the Roman world operate on a sufficiently big scale to increase the overall size of markets, enabling specialization of labor and thus Smithian growth? Although the Malthusian model represents the dominant view to describe the economic performance of the ancient world, economic theory suggests that the Smithian model coul...

Book review Reviewed Work(s): Capital, Investment and Innovation in the Roman World edited by P. Erdkamp, K. Verboven and A. Zuiderhoek Published by: Oxford University Press Review by: L. Oddo

The paper focuses on the Antonine-Plague’s consequences from an economic-political and philosophical-cultural perspective. Exploiting analogies with the Malthusian model used to interpret the wage growth of the post-Black Death of the fourteenth century, the authors underline how the measures implemented by Roman institutions jointly with the degre...