Norm, virtue and information: the just price and individual behaviour in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae

Economic thought in scholasticism

“…In the two first types of situation, the part played by the morality of the seller and of the buyer is linked to the role of information not about the just price itself (which is assumed to be known, or easily knowable, by everyone), but about the goods and on the conditions of the transaction. The examples which Thomas Aquinas introduced in question 77 of the secunda secundae all suggest the same kind of process (see Lapidus 1994): whereas in (1) a lack of information might make the actual price depart from the just price to the detriment of any of the parties without any sinful intention, the same lack of information by one party in (2) can also be manipulated purposefully to his detriment by the other party, so that the gap between the actual price and the just price now constitutes the fraud denounced in question 77. On the contrary, a potential transaction between a virtuous seller and a virtuous buyer, both accurately informed about the good and the transaction, represents a kind of reference to which the actual transaction is compared.…”

Morally ruled behaviour: The neglected contribution of Scholasticism

“…The comments of two anonymous referees have contributed to improve the paper. 1 Dempsey 1948, Schumpeter 1954, Roover 1971, Grice-Hutchison 1993, Lapidus, 1994 2 St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas continue to be the most quoted authors in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 3 In Aquinas's vision of the universe, natural law is inserted in a hierarchy of laws.…”

A Meta-theoretical Assessment of the Decline of Scholastic Economics

“…3 Backhouse (1998:193-203) readdresses the question concerning convergence of economic beliefs over time, concluding that the inability of contemporary economics to reach a consensus and, eventually, eliminate disagreement, is partly due to the fact that "empirical evidence provides very weak 5 Typical discussions of the problem of the just price in medieval economic thought can be found, among the abundant literature, in the recent contributions of Hamouda andPrice (1997) andLapidus (1994). See, also De Roover (1958), without ignoring the classical analysis of this issue by J.W.…”