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7 Roman Legal Trad. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/rltrad7 and id is 1 raw text is: In Dubious Battle: An Economic Analysis of Emperor Hadrian's Fish and Olive Oil Laws Morris Silver* Abstract - Cut out the middleman! is a familiar advertising slogan and an article of faith for some modern consumers. Heeding the slogan is a matter of free choice, however. The first part of this article argues that the emperor Hadrian was con- vinced that middlemen served no productive purpose and only raised transaction costs. So convinced indeed that he employed the power of the state to exclude them from participation in markets, most famously from the fish market at Eleusis. The anti-middleman policy had damaging economic results. The se- cond part of the article summarizes the details of Hadrian's Athe- nian Olive Oil Law and then relies on economic theory to predict its economic impact in the short and the long run. It is concluded that Hadrian's policy resulted in a decline in the production of Athenian olive oil, which constituted a misallocation of scarce productive resources. Hadrian's law increased administrative and transaction costs and, predictably, it transformed Athenian consu- mers, his chosen beneficiaries, into evildoers and profiteers. Wacke notes, The Classical jurists affirmed in express terms that the agreement on the price in a given contract was left to the discretion of the parties to the contract and that they were also allowed to snatch a bargain (invicem se circumscribere) (for ex- ample, Paul. Dig. 19.2.22.3). On the other hand, The emperor is * Professor Emeritus of Economics in the City College of the City University of New York. My research benefited from the comments of two anonymous readers of RLT. I would also like to acknowledge the conscien- tious assistance of Evelyn Bodden of the Interlibrary Loan Department in the Cohen Library in the City College of New York. English translations from the Digest are taken from A. Watson, ed., The Digest of Justinian, 2nd. ed. (Philadelphia 1998). 1 A. Wacke, Freedom of Contract and Restraint of Trade Clauses in Roman and Modern Law, LHR, 11 (1993), 2-3. Roman Legal Tradition, 7 (2011), 1-15. ISSN 1943-6483. Published by the Ames Foundation at the Harvard Law School and the University of Glasgow School of Law. This work may be reproduced and distributed for all non-commercial purposes. Copyright @ 2011 by Morris Silver. All rights reserved apart from those granted above. ROMANLEGALTRADITION.ORG

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