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.He focused on the ethical aspect of prices, raising issues of justice in exchange.Mainly, he was asking - What is a just price?Historians of economics differ in their interpretations of the Aquinas notion of just price.Some of them argue that a just price of a commodity according to Aquinas is an equivalent to the cost of the labor embodied in the commodity.Others, that is an equivalent in terms of the utility, and others that the just price is an equivalent in terms of total cost of production.The most popular interpretation is, however, that for Aquinas just price meant simply the market price.If this is correct - we should stress that it is not useful solution, since Aquinas had no economic theory explaining the forces that determine market price.Scholastic thinkers, following Aristotle, were also in the early middle ages prohibiting the usury, that is taking the interest on money loans, but later in the period they accepted it, at least if money was lent on business purposes.St Thomas Aquinas was a complex and interesting thinker.On the one hand, he held back economic thinking by emphasizing ethical issues and focusing on moral aspects of economics; on the other hand, he advanced economics by his use of little more abstract thinking than writers before him.So much on Aquinas.Short summary of early pre-classical economics.Pre-classical thinkers did not pursue economics as a separate discipline; they were interested in much broader, more philosophical issues.Moreover, since the economic activity they observed during those early times was not organized into a market system as we know it, they concentrated not on the nature and meaning of the price system but on ethical questions concerning justice and fairness.The Greeks studied the administration of resources at the level of the household and producer and pursued the ideas of efficiency and division of labor.They examined the role of private property, different notions of justice and the distinction between human needs and wants.Later, scholastic doctrine did not attempt to analyze the economy, but rather to set religious standards by which to judge economic conduct.Nevertheless, the scholastic doctrine helped to form a base for the development of a more analytical, abstract approach to economics [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]