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A Defense of a Thomistic Concept of the Just Price

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  • Koehn, Daryl
  • Wilbratte, Barry

Abstract

Since St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the first scholastics to analyze the idea of a “just price,” economists, economic historians and philosophers interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the market have focused on Aquinas’s writings. One group insists that Aquinas defined the just price as the payment needed to cover sellers’ labor and material costs. A second camp vehemently counters that Aquinas’s just price is simply the going market price. We argue that neither of these views is correct. The Thomistic just price is the price that would be agreed to by a just person as part of an exchange. This “just person price” takes into account the well-being of the individual transactors and the good of the entire community. Such a price reduces neither to the cost-covering price nor to the market exchange price. A Thomistic concept of the just person price deserves to be reconsidered, especially because a Thomistic approach offers some useful ways to deal with issues quite differently from the popular neoclassical approach directed toward arriving at a socially optimal market price.

Suggested Citation

  • Koehn, Daryl & Wilbratte, Barry, 2012. "A Defense of a Thomistic Concept of the Just Price," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 501-526, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:22:y:2012:i:03:p:501-526_00
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Probability, prudence, danger: Thomas Aquinas on the building of the lexicon of risk," Working Papers halshs-03787210, HAL.
    2. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Risks on Trade: The Activity of the Merchant in Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences," Post-Print halshs-03515973, HAL.
    3. Pierre Januard, 2022. "At the Boundaries of the Trading Sphere: The Appearance of the 'Just Price' in Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences," Working Papers halshs-03658417, HAL.
    4. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Risky exchanges: price and justice in Thomas Aquinas’s De emptione et venditione ad tempus," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 729-769, July.
    5. Domènec Melé, 2016. "Re-thinking Capitalism: What We can Learn from Scholasticism?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 293-304, January.
    6. Jackson, William A., 2024. "The Ethics of Price Variation," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 201-215.
    7. Juan Elegido, 2015. "The Just Price as the Price Obtainable in an Open Market," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 557-572, September.
    8. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Licit and illicit risks in Thomas Aquinas's De emptione et venditione ad tempus [Risques licites et illicites dans le De emptione et venditione ad tempus de Thomas d'Aquin]," Working Papers halshs-03559035, HAL.
    9. Januard, Pierre, 2024. "Probability, prudence, danger: Thomas Aquinas on the building of the lexicon of risk," SocArXiv n7j9t, Center for Open Science.
    10. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Licit and illicit risks in Thomas Aquinas's De emptione et venditione ad tempus [Risques licites et illicites dans le De emptione et venditione ad tempus de Thomas d'Aquin]," Post-Print halshs-03559035, HAL.
    11. Christian Fieseler & Eliane Bucher & Christian Pieter Hoffmann, 2019. "Unfairness by Design? The Perceived Fairness of Digital Labor on Crowdworking Platforms," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(4), pages 987-1005, June.
    12. João Neves & Domènec Melé, 2013. "Managing Ethically Cultural Diversity: Learning from Thomas Aquinas," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(4), pages 769-780, September.
    13. Nunan, Daniel & Di Domenico, MariaLaura, 2022. "Value creation in an algorithmic world: Towards an ethics of dynamic pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 451-460.

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