Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T18:36:40.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Defense of a Thomistic Concept of the Just Price

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Daryl Koehn  and
Barry Wilbratte
Daryl Koehn
Affiliation:
University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis
Barry Wilbratte
Affiliation:
University of St. Thomas, Houston
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

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.

Keywords

just priceexchangeneoclassical economicsAquinas
Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 501 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2012

References

REFERENCES

Alexander, Larry, and Schwarzschild, Maimon. “Subversive Thoughts on Freedom and the Common Good,” Michigan Law Review 97(6) (May 1999): 1813–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas.In Decem Libros Ethicorum Expositio, ed. Spiazzi, R.M.Turin: Marietti, 1964.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas.Of God and His Creatures, trans. Rickaby, J.Londan: Burns and Oates, 1905.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas.Quaestiones Quodlibetales, trans. Edwards, Sandra. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas.The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd rev. ed. London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1912–1936.Google Scholar
Ashley, William J. “Justum Pretium,” in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. 2: (1926), 500–01.Google Scholar
Baldwin, John W. “The Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists, and Theologians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 49(4) (1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, John W.Review of Odd Langholm’s Economics in Medieval Schools, Speculum 69(1) (January 1994): 200–03.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barath, Desire. “The Just Price and the Costs of Production According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” New Scholasticism 34 (October 1960): 413–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barath, Desire. “Value, Price and St. Thomas.” The Thomist 25 (1960): 325–81.Google Scholar
Brigham, Eugene F., and Ehrhardt, Michael C.Financial Management. Mason, Ohio: Thomson Southwestern, 2008.Google Scholar
Chafuen, Alejandro A.Christians for Freedom: Late-Scholastic Economics. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Chafuen, Alejandro A.Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Bernard W. “Ability to Pay,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 60(3) (May 1946): 351–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dempsey, Bernard W. “Just Price in a Functional Economy,” American Economic Review 25(3) (September 1935): 471–86.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Michael T. “What Bearing, If Any, Does the Christian Doctrine of Providence Have Upon the Operation of the Market Economy?,” Journal of Markets & Morality 8(2) (Fall 2005): 481–92.Google Scholar
Dougherty, Richard J. “Catholicism and the Economy: Augustine and Aquinas on Property Ownership,” Journal of Markets and Morality 6(2) (Fall 2003): 479–95.Google Scholar
Epstein, Richard A.Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good. New York: Basic Books, 2002.Google Scholar
Finkelstein, Joseph, and Thimm, Alfred L.Economists and Society: The Development of Economic Thought from Aquinas to Keynes. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.Google Scholar
Gershfield, Edward M. “Business Regulation and Price Control in Talmudic Economics,” International Journal of Social Economics 13(9) (1986): 45–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Barry J. “Aristotle and the Development of Value Theory,” The Quarterly of Journal of Economics 78(1) (February 1964): 115–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hägg, Claes. “Just Price and Equal Opportunity,” Journal of Business Ethics 2 (1983): 269–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamouda, Omar. F., and Price, Betsy B. “The Justice of the Just Price,” The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 4(2) (Summer 1997): 191–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, Samuel. “On the Interpretation of the Just Price,” Kyklos 8(4) (1965): 615–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jevons, W. Stanley.The Theory of Political Economy, 4th ed. London: Macmillan, 1911.Google Scholar
Johnson, Edgar A.J. “Just Price in an Unjust World,” International Journal of Ethics 48 (1938): 165–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Joseph F. Jr., “Natural Law and the Fiduciary Duties of Business Managers,” Journal of Markets & Morality 8(1) (Spring 2005): 27–51.Google Scholar
Kaula, Rudolf.Theory of the Just Price: A Historical and Critical Study of the Problem of Economic Value, trans. Hogg, Robert D.London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1940.Google Scholar
Langholm, Odd. “Economic Freedom in Scholastic Thought,” History of Political Economy 14 (1982): 260–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langholm, Odd.Economics in Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200–1350. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langholm, Odd. “Monopoly and Market Irregularities in Medieval Economic Thought: Traditions and Texts to A.D. 1500,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 28(4) (December 2006): 395–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langholm, Odd.Price and Value in the Aristotelian Tradition: A Study in Scholastic Economic Sources. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1979.Google Scholar
Lowry, S., and Gordon, B., eds. Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Social Justice. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1998.Google Scholar
Lynch, Tony, and Walsh, Adrian. “The Very Idea of Justice in Pricing,” Business and Professional Ethics Journal 28(3/4) (Fall/Winter 2002): 5–28.Google Scholar
Maurer, Armand.About Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation. Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 2011.Google Scholar
McGee, Robert W. “Thomas Aquinas: A Pioneer in the Field of Law and Economics,” Western State University Law Review 18(1) (Fall 1990): 471–83.Google Scholar
McKinnon, Thomas R. “Just Price in Medieval Europe: Underlying Economic Factors,” International Advances in Economic Research 6(3) (August 2000): 572–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahon, Thomas F. “A Reaction to Vogel’s ‘The Ethical Roots of Business,’” Business Ethics Quarterly 1(2) (April 1991): 211–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meng, Jude Chua Soo. “What Profits for a Man to Gain: Just (the) Price (of the Soul),” Journal of Markets & Morality 8(1) (Spring 2005): 7–26.Google Scholar
Michel, Christian. “What Is a ‘Just Price’?,” Journal of Markets & Morality 2(2) (Fall 1999): 182–96.Google Scholar
Monroe, Arthur Eli, ed. Early Economic Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930.Google Scholar
Piedra, Alberto M.Natural Law: The Foundation of an Orderly Economic System. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004.Google Scholar
Roover, Raymond de. “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy,” Journal of Economic History 18 (December 1958): 418–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roover, Raymond de. “Monopoly Theory Prior to Adam Smith: A Revision,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 65(4) (November 1951): 492–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roover, Raymond de.La Pensée Economique des Scholastiques. Doctrines et Méthodes. Montreal: Institut d’Etudes Médiévales, 1971.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A.Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Bros., 1950.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph A.A History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954Google Scholar
Sewall, Hannah Robie.The Theory of Value before Adam Smith. New York: American Economic Association, 1901.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jeremy. “What’s the Matter with Price-Gouging?,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(2) (April 2009): 275–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walras, León.Elements of Pure Economics, trans. Jaffe, William. Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1954.Google Scholar
Walsh, Adrian. “The Morality of the Market and Medieval Schoolmen,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 3(2) (2004): 241–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woelfel, B. LaSalle.Catholic Thought in Business and Economics. Austin, Tex.: St. Edwards University Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Wood, Diana.Medieval Economic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwolinski, Matt. “Dialogue on Price-Gouging,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(2) (April 2009): 294–303.Google Scholar