[The original message, i.e., Engen's review of Amemiya, was distributed 
on 16 Apr 2009 and is available in the archives at

https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/shoe.html

HB]



------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Author's Response to Darel Tai Engen's EH.NET Book Review of Takeshi Amemiya, _Economy and Economics of Ancient Greece_.

By Takeshi Amemiya, Department of Economics, Stanford University.


Engen writes as if Part II (Economy) of my book were the main part of my book and the other two parts were unimportant and should be subjugated to Part II. Thus, he complains that I discuss ancient history before the classical age and topics such as religion. In my mind, however, the other two parts are at least equally and maybe even more important than Part II. Engen’s preconception has led him to misunderstand Part III completely. He writes, “The discussion may be useful to show students that the ancient Greeks may have had fundamentally different goals for economic activity from us, but Amemiya needs to make this clear throughout.” What I am trying to make clear is the exact opposite: the classical Greeks had the same goals for economic activity as us. What I am presenting in Part III are the ethical thoughts of Plato and Aristotle, which were very different from those of common people.

Finally, regarding Part II, I am quite ready to agree with Engen that it has many deficiencies. As I stated on p. 62 of the book, the data are extremely unreliable, and therefore one should ideally try to obtain interval estimates for various economic variables. This is what I plan to do in the future. Therefore, I no more trust my point estimate of GDP than Engen does. By my model I wanted to show how various sectors of the economy are interrelated so that if you change one value many other values must be changed. I also wanted to show that one can obtain a rough idea of the economy by accounting identities alone without any behavioral model. My model was the first comprehensive economic model of the classical Athenian economy. I hope other scholars will start improving it.
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