CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have sought to show how an economic analysis of agency in an area of the law of undeniable importance to Roman society can help us come to a better understanding of the complex relationship between law and the economy of the Roman Empire.
The institution of tutorship arose out of a basic concern to protect the property of underage orphans. But the legal regulations shaping the institution of tutorship seem designed to protect pupils in a relationship characterised by substantial asymmetries of information between principal and agent. Viewed in this way, the legal institutions surrounding these forms of agency, like the institutions surrounding agents serving as business managers for wealthy property owners, can be regarded as ‘instrumental,’ in the sense that they were established or developed by policy-makers to achieve particular goals, in these two cases to protect the interests of important constituencies in the Roman world.[553] The forms of agency that I have discussed in this chapter were the products, then, of both the basic structures of Roman society and upper-class economic interests. They fulfilled basic goals, and so can be seen, from the perspective of bounded rationality, as ‘satisficing’ solutions, even if they were not ‘efficient’, in the sense of promoting the most valued use of resources and fostering economic growth.The development and maintenance of legal institutions designed to protect the interests of pupils had broader implications for the Roman economy. In developing rules for this type of agency, the Roman legal authorities were guided by a basic understanding of the Roman economy that they shared with other members of their class, and so to this extent it can be argued that they were aware of the economic implications of their policies. But the law of tutorship was not developed to serve an economic policy, but to achieve a social goal, with costs imposed on the economy as a whole.[554] To the extent that the law of tutorship had consequences for the distribution of wealth in Roman society, it supported efforts to maintain the economic viability of a broad class of property owners in the Roman Empire, not simply the wealthiest members of the elite, but property owners who would eventually serve on town councils around the Empire.
The law of tutorship, then, represented an institution that promoted stability and thus the efforts of the Roman government to maintain the broad social structure essential to its policies in ruling the empire.BIBLIOGRAPHY
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