The Economic Complexity of the Roman Empire

Economic complexity is a powerful tool to estimate the productive capabilities and future growth of modern economies. Little is known of how economic complexity evolves over long periods in history. In this paper, we use archaeological evidence from the Roman Empire in the form of short texts preserved on a durable material (i.e. inscriptions) to estimate the economic complexity of the various provinces of the empire. By connecting the occupations listed in the text of inscriptions with the location in which the inscribed objects were found we can estimate that the most complex areas during the first four centuries of the Roman Empire have a remarkable and statistically significant overlap with the most complex countries today. While we lack an explanation for the reason of the preservation of economic complexity through the ages, this evidence provides a suggestion about how difficult the development of economic capabilities might be.