Visualising Roman Institutional Environments for Exchange as a Complex System

Haklai combines an institutional approach with complexity economics to analyse Roman legal environments during the High Empire; specifically, the institutional framework for using money in the private sphere. The chapter starts with the relationship between economics and complexity theory, gives examples of visualised complexity, and surveys visualisations previously applied in studying ancient economies. Haklai offers two complexity-oriented visualisations: The first diagram explores the complex mechanism of money in Roman law, acknowledging its abstract nature whilst accommodating a spectrum of its physical manifestations. The second is a causal loop diagram, which partially visualises the institutional environments of economic interactions carried out under coexisting legal systems: Roman, Greek-Egyptian, and Jewish. Both visualisations emphasise the self-adjustment of the institutional environment and the emergence of new practices and procedures.