Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:56:36.099Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Values and institutions as determinants of entrepreneurship in ancient Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

GEORGE C. BITROS  and
ANASTASSIOS D. KARAYIANNIS
GEORGE C. BITROS*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece
ANASTASSIOS D. KARAYIANNIS*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Piraeus, Greece
*
*Correspondence to: George C. Bitros, Professor, Department of Economics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission St, 10434, Athens, Greece. Email: [email protected]
**Anastassios D. Karayiannis, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Piraeus, 80, Karaoli & Dimitriou, 18534, Piraeus, Greece. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper shows that in classical Athens, values and institutions encouraged many types of entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurs received social and political distinctions, and some entrepreneurial slaves gained their freedom. However, to deter extreme individualism, success in business was judged by the means used to acquire wealth, rather than simply the amount of wealth acquired. The system encouraged those entrepreneurs who were esteemed socially, to work hard, use ethical means, not to consume their wealth conspicuously but to share it with the rest of the people by undertaking public expenditures, and to abide by the laws and ordinances of the city-state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , August 2008 , pp. 205 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aeschines 345 BC, Against Timarchus, Athens: Papyrus, 1963 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Aeschylus 472 BC, Persians, Thessaloniki: Zitros, 2005 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Amemiya, T. 2007, Economy and Economics of Ancient Greece, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Andreades, A. M. 1933, A History of Greek Public Finance, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Antiphon mid 5th century Tetralogy, Athens: I. Zacharopoulos, 1939 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Aristophanes 425–388 BC Comedies, Thessaloniki: Zitros, 2007 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Aristotle ca. 335–322 BC, Works, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1952.Google Scholar
Barro, R. 1999, ‘Determinants of Democracy’, Journal of Political Economy, 107: S158–S183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bitros, G. C. 2005, ‘Scale, Scope and Entrepreneurship’, in Cassis, Y. and Pepelasis-Minoglou, I. (eds), Entrepreneurship in Theory and History, London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Bitros, G. C. and Karayiannis, A. D. 2006a, ‘The Liberating Power of Entrepreneurship in Ancient Athens’, in Cassis, Y. and Pepelasis-Minoglou, I. (eds), Country Studies in Entrepreneurship: A Historical Perspective, London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Bitros, G. C. and Karayiannis, A. D. 2006b, ‘Morality, Institutions and Economic Growth: Lessons from Ancient Greece’, Athens University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics, Discussion Paper No. 180.Google Scholar
Burke, E. 1992, ‘The Economy of Athens in the Classical Era: Some Adjustments to the Primitivist Model’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 122: 199–226.Google Scholar
Calhoun, G. 1926, The Ancient Greeks and the Evolution of Standards in Business, Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Cohen, E. 1990, ‘Commercial Lending by Athenian Banks: Cliometric Fallacies and Forensic Methodology’, Classical Philology, 85: 177–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, E. 1992, Athenian Economy and Society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, J. K. 1998, ‘Ancient Economies: Models and Muddles’, in Parkins, H. and Smith, C., Trade, Traders, and the Ancient City, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Demosthenes ca. 363–330 BC, Orations and Speeches, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Engen, D. T. 2001, ‘Trade, Traders, and the Economy of Athens in the Fourth Century B.C.E.’, in Tandy, D. (ed.), Prehistory and History: Ethnicity, Class, and Political Economy, Montreal: Black Rose.Google Scholar
Engen, D. T. 2005, ‘Ancient Greenbacks: Athenian Owls, the Law of Nikophron, and the Greek Economy’, Historia, 54: 359–381Google Scholar
Euripides ca. 421 BC, The Suppliants, Athens: Papyrus, 1968 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Figueira, T. 1986, ‘Sitopolai and Sitophylakes in Lysias Against the Graindealers: Governmental Intervention in the Athenian Economy’, Phoenix, 40: 149–171.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. 1973, The Ancient Economy, London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. 1977, ‘The Ancient City’, repr. in Shaw, B. and Saller, R. (eds), M.I. Finley: Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, London: Chatto & Windus, 1981.Google Scholar
Fleck, R. K. and Hansen, F. A. 2006 ‘The Origins of Democracy: A Model with Application to Ancient Greece’, Journal of Law and Economics, 49: 115–145.Google Scholar
French, A. 1964, The Growth of the Athenian Economy, Westport, CO: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Galpin, T. 1983–4, ‘The Democratic Roots of Athenian Imperialism in the Fifth Century BC’, Classical Journal, 79: 100–109.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, R. 1987, Premodern Financial Systems: A Historical Comparative Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, E. 1989, ‘The Liability of Business Partners in Athenian Law: The Dispute between Lycon and Megacleides ([Dem.] 52.20–1)’, Classical Quarterly, 39: 339–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, E. 2002, ‘Workshop, Marketplace and Household’, in Cartledge, P., Cohen, E., and Foxhall, L. (eds), Money, Labour and Land, Routledge.Google Scholar
Herodotus ca. 440 BC, History, Athens: Papyrus, 1953 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. 1988, Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics, Cambridge: Polity Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyperides ca. 360–322 BC, Minor Attic Orators, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Humphreys, S. C. 1978, Anthropology and the Greeks, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Isager, S. and Hansen, M. 1975, Aspects of Athenian Society in the Fourth Century BC, Odense: Odense University Press.Google Scholar
Isocrares ca. 402–354 BC, Orations and Speeches, Athens: Papyrus, 1956–62 (in Greek); Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Karayiannis, A. D. 1992, ‘Entrepreneurship in Classical Greek Literature’, The South African Journal of Economics, 60: 67–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirzner, I. 1973, Competition and Entrepreneurship, Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Lycurgus 331 BC, Against Leocrates, Athens: Papiros, 1962 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Lysias ca. 403–380 BC, Orations and Speeches, Athens: Papyrus, 1958 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Manville, B. and Ober, J. 2003, A Company of Citizens, Greek trns, Athens: Klidarithmos, 2004.Google Scholar
Merton, R. K. 1936, ‘The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action’, American Sociological Review, 1: 894–904.Google Scholar
Morris, I. 1994, ‘The Athenian Economy Twenty Years after The Ancient Economy’, Classical Philology, 89: 351–366.Google Scholar
Millett, P. 1991, Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. 1994, ‘Economic Performance Through Time’, American Economic Review, 84: 359–368.Google Scholar
Ober, J. 1989, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Olsson, O. and Frey, B. 2002 ‘Entrepreneurship as Recombinant Growth’, Small Business Economics, 19: 69–80.Google Scholar
Ostwald, M. 1995, ‘Public Expense: Whose Obligation, Athens 600–454 B.C.E.’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 139: 368–379.Google Scholar
Pausanias ca 160 AD, Attica, Athens: Papyrus, 1953 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Plato ca. 380–348BC, The Collected Dialogues, of Plato, Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H. (eds), New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Plutarch ca. 100 AD, Solon, Theseus, Pericles, Athens: Papyrus, 1939 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. 1957, ‘Aristotle Discovers the Economy’, repr. in Dalton, G. (ed.), Essays of Karl Polanyi: Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Schaps, D. M. 2004, The Invention of Coinage and the Monetization of Ancient Greece, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A. 1911, The Theory of Economic Development, English Trns. 1934, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shipton, K. 2000, Leasing and Lending: The Cash-Economy in Fourth-Century BC Athens, London: University of London.Google Scholar
Thompson, W. 1982, ‘The Athenian Entrepreneur’, L'Antiquiet' Classique, 51: 53–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thucydides ca. 431–411 BC, History of the Peloponnesian War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928.Google Scholar
Xenophon ca. 400–355 BC, Works, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Pseudo-Xenophon ca. 400–355 BC, Athenian Constitution, Athens: Papyrus, 1938 (in Greek).Google Scholar