The justice of the just price

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.