This paper investigates the economic aspects of slavery in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Existing evidence reveals significant variation in the relative cost of slaves compared to unskilled wages: it appears that at different times and places, a typical slave could be purchased for prices equivalent to wages paid from 150 to 1000 days of unskilled labor. To explain this great disparity, we develop a principal–agent model that predicts the return on slaves relative to wages, which varies as a function of the prevalence of slavery in the labor force. This model implies that slavery may have increased aggregate labor productivity by reallocating workers from less productive to more productive regions within the Greco-Roman world.

中文翻译：

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希腊罗马奴隶制的经济学

本文研究了古希腊罗马世界奴隶制的经济方面。现有证据表明，与非熟练工资相比，奴隶的相对成本存在显著差异：似乎在不同的时间和地点，可以以相当于 150 至 1000 天非熟练劳动力支付的工资的价格购买一个典型的奴隶。为了解释这种巨大的差异，我们开发了一个委托人-代理模型，该模型预测奴隶相对于工资的回报，该回报率随劳动力中奴隶制的普遍性而变化。该模型意味着，在希腊罗马世界内，奴隶制可能通过将工人从生产率较低的地区重新分配到生产率较高的地区，从而提高了总劳动生产率。