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Cloth for Wheat or Cloth for Cloth? Ricardo and Krugman on Ancient International Trade

Abstract

The chapter presents a way of connecting economic research methods to the studies of the Ancient World. It displays fundamental economic concepts to explain international trade and shows in an exemplary way how these concepts can be applied to the analysis of historical contexts.
The theories can, in particular, provide a unifying framework for observations that seem to be contradictory at first glance. In addition, and even more important than providing explanations for observations that have been well documented and explained within other contexts, it aims at triggering the formulation of new research questions. In particular, the exposition of Heckscher-Ohlin‘s and Krugman‘s modelling approach to provide lines along which material from the Ancient World can be sorted in new ways.