IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eujhet/v4y1997i2p191-216.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The justice of the just price

Author

Listed:
  • O. F. Hamouda
  • B. B. Price

Abstract

The medieval notion of the just price was an outcome of neither an exclusively economic analysis nor a completely ethical argument, but an amalgam of some features of each. At issue is the significance the medievals attached to the concepts of price and justice and how an integrated economics and ethics made for a mode of reasoning about price different from the endogenousty focused price theory and limited boundaries of modern economics. It is argued in 'The Justice of the Just Price' that the treatment of price in medieval economic thought cannot be grasped without a comprehensive approach to its determination. The argument will first focus separately on the description of the medieval notions of price (cost of production, need, etc.) and of justice (virtue/vice) as features of the medieval concept of the just price. It proposes that, by virtue of the fact that the premises of the medieval system of analysis assumed greed as a nefarious part of human economic behaviour and presupposed the necessity of justice prior to exchange, medieval intellectuals justified on ethical grounds the interference of the just price in market activity and attempted to rectify the inequalities of exchange and distribution through the institutional regulations of Church and court.

Suggested Citation

  • O. F. Hamouda & B. B. Price, 1997. "The justice of the just price," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 191-216.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:4:y:1997:i:2:p:191-216
    DOI: 10.1080/10427719700000036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10427719700000036
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10427719700000036?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierre Januard, 2021. "Analysis risk and commercial risk: the first treatment of usury in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 599-634, July.
    2. S. Drakopoulos & G.N. Gotsis, 2004. "A Meta-theoretical Assessment of the Decline of Scholastic Economics," History of Economics Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 19-45, January.
    3. 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.
    4. André Lapidus & Pierre Januard, 2024. "Usury and simony Trading for no price: Thomas Aquinas on money loans, sacraments and exchange - Chapter 7," Post-Print hal-04396111, HAL.
    5. William A. Jackson, 2024. "The Ethics of Price Variation," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(2), pages 201-215, April.
    6. Lambert, Thomas, 2019. "Bankers as Immoral? The Parallels between Aquinas’s Views on Usury and Marxian Views of Banking and Credit," MPRA Paper 97741, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Risks on Trade: The Activity of the Merchant in Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences," Working Papers halshs-03313255, HAL.
    8. Marek Hudon, 2006. "Fair interest rates when lending to the poor: Are fair prices derived from basic principles of justice?," Working Papers CEB 06-015.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:4:y:1997:i:2:p:191-216. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.