Roman Empire's Economic Complexity Predicts Modern Wealth, Study Finds
The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire
Using the LIST database of Latin inscriptions, researchers estimated economic complexity for Roman provinces and modern countries. They found a significant correlation between Roman-era and modern ECI, suggesting economic complexity is sticky over millennia. The study corrects for status, gender, and historiography biases.
It suggests that being complex in the classical era carries a shared signal with being complex today, after a handful of centuries of history.