The Just Price: Three Insights from the Salamanca School
26 Pages Posted: 25 Jun 2014
Date Written: 2009
Abstract
In the 16th and 17th centuries members of the Salamanca School engaged in a sustained and sophisticated discussion of the issue of just prices. This paper uses their contribution as a point of departure for a consideration of justice in pricing which will be relevant to current-day circumstances. The key theses of members of this school were that fairness of exchanges should be assessed objectively, that the fair price of an article is one equal to its 'value', and that the best indicator of that value is the price that article commonly fetches in an open market. This article tries to bring to light the attractiveness of those views in order to guide current practice by contrasting them with alternative views, showing their connection with intuitively attractive basic standards, and linking them to commonly shared intuitions.
Keywords: Fair price, Just price, Pricing, Salamanca School, Marketing ethics
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