Agrarian economy in the context of Socioeconomics

The study of the economies of the ancient city-state of Rome and its empire during the Republican and Imperial periods remains highly speculative. There are no surviving records of business and government accounts, such as detailed reports of tax revenues, and few literary sources regarding economic activity. Instead, the study of this ancient economy is today mainly based on the surviving archeological and literary evidence that allow researchers to form conjectures based on comparisons with other more recent pre-industrial economies.

During the early centuries of the Roman Republic, it is conjectured that the economy was largely agrarian and centered on the trading of commodities such as grain and wine. Financial markets were established through such trade, and financial institutions, which extended credit for personal use and public infrastructure, were established primarily by interfamily wealth. In times of agricultural and cash shortfall, Roman officials and moneyers tended to respond by coining money, which happened during the prolonged crisis of the First Punic War and created economic distortion and difficulties.

The Great Depression (Romanian: Marea Criză Economică or, rarely, Marea Depresie) of 1929–1933, which affected the whole world, had several consequences in the Kingdom of Romania. Romania had been among the winner countries of World War I. It received several new territories (Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania), with many natural resources. However, the war caused heavy human and economic losses to the country. Romania had to fight inflation and the non-convertibility of its currency, the Romanian leu (lei in plural). Romania then had a fundamentally agrarian economy, with agriculture accounting for 63.2% of the national production. The Great Depression affected Romania in several ways. For example, in 1933, the net national income was of 172,614,000,000 lei, only 62% of that of 1929, which was of 275,180,000,000 lei. To fight the economic crisis, the National Bank of Romania carried out various measures and the country took various loans. Help was also called upon from France.

The Great Depression led to a drop of 50% in industrial production and an increase of 300,000 persons in unemployment in Romania. By the early 1930s, the price of a quintal of wheat had fallen below the cost of harvesting it; agricultural goods, unprotected by any customs measures, were left to the discretion of international competition, which contributed to the decrease of their prices by 60–70% compared to those of 1928 and 1929. Landowners went bankrupt and the peasants had little left to eat or pay taxes to the state. By 1932, some 2.5 million farmers had unpaid debts to banks, worth 52 billion lei.

An experience economy is the sale of memorable experiences to customers. The term was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy.