A Theory of the Ancient Mesoamerican Economy

Abstract

Purpose – To provide a general theory for how the ancient Mesoamerican economy functioned.

Design/methods/approach – First the chapter describes formally the sectors or operations of the economy: production, consumption, labor, specialization, exchange and prices, savings and investment, credit, quasi-money, markets, and dynamics. Then it relates this economy to its Mesoamerican cultural context.

Findings – Much but not all of this economy, with its great volume of transactions, worked according to market principles, without coinage or state-fiat money yet not barter. The theory has testable implications. Periods of growth and decline in preindustrial urban societies could have been due to economic forces.

Research limitations/implications – The presentation is verbal, not mathematical. Precolumbian economic documents hardly exist; advances in this line of research will have to come from archaeology (in part informed by earliest contact-era history).

Social implications – Extending theories of money and markets to include preindustrial urban societies should deepen and enrich economic thinking generally.

Originality/value of chapter – The first nonsubstantivist model of the Mesoamerican economy; insights on specialization and competition when firms are households; how high volumes of exchange work with commodity monies.

Citation

Kowalewski, S.A. (2012), "A Theory of the Ancient Mesoamerican Economy", Matejowsky, T. and Wood, D.C. (Ed.) Political Economy, Neoliberalism, and the Prehistoric Economies of Latin America (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 32), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 187-224. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0190-1281(2012)0000032012