Monopoly and Market Irregularities in Medieval Economic Thought: Traditions and Texts to A.D. 1500

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odd Langholm
Keyword(s):  
Price Discrimination ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Ethical Norm ◽  
Government Grants ◽  
Just Price ◽  
Commutative Justice ◽  
Cost Factors

In a study of pre-classical monopoly theory published in 1951, Raymond de Roo ver started by briefly examining the doctrines held by the medieval scholastics. His analysis met with favorable response and was confirmed and further developed by later historians. The most satisfactory statement may still be that of Barry Gordon in his monograph on early economics. The consensus of these scholars can be summarized as follows. Medieval authors looked askance at the attempts by the guilds to establish minimum prices. They recognized the expediency of government grants of monopoly and regulation of prices of certain commodities. They strongly condemned private monopolies established for personal gain, as well as collusion among sellers for that purpose, price discrimination, engrossing, forestalling, regrating, and other forms of speculation. The just price was the current, competitive market price, free of all irregularities of these kinds and free of fraud and duress. Gordon adds that the schoolmen also sometimes referred to labor and cost factors, rather than the market, as estimates of the just price. These estimates were not necessarily contradictive but mutually supportive. They applied when the market was not working smoothly and when there was no market in operation at the time and place of the sale. When an exchange is concluded in a competitive market under normal circumstances, the going price can hardly be said to be unjust. It may sometimes seem uncharitable. There will always be some who cannot afford to pay the competitive price. Poor relief in medieval society, however, was mainly a matter of almsgiving. Unlike commutative justice, charity is not a workable ethical norm in the marketplace.

18. Abuse of dominance (2): pricing practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Whish ◽  
David Bailey
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Price Discrimination ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Single Market ◽  
High Price ◽  
Parallel Imports ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Abuse Of Dominance ◽  
Article 102 Tfeu ◽  
The Eu

This chapter considers abusive pricing practices under Article 102 TFEU and the Chapter II prohibition in the Competition Act 1998. It discusses cost concepts used in determining whether a price is abusive and deals with excessive pricing; conditional rebates; bundling; predatory pricing; margin squeeze; price discrimination; and practices harmful to the single market. Price discrimination may be both exploitative and exclusionary and an excessively high price may be a way of preventing parallel imports or excluding a competitor from the market; but the division may provide helpful insights into the way in which the law is applied in practice. In each section the application of Article 102 by the European Commission and the EU Courts is considered, followed by cases in the UK. Where appropriate, reference is made to the Commission’s Guidance on the Commission’s Enforcement Priorities in Applying Article [102 TFEU] to Abusive Exclusionary Conduct by Dominant Undertakings.

Simulation of Market Price Formation as a Game Between Stochastic Automata

1976 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. M. El-Fattah ◽  
R. Henriksen
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Probability ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Price Formation ◽  
Market Conditions ◽  
Reinforcement Scheme ◽  
Stochastic Automata ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Simulation Results

A seller in a free competitive market attempts to optimize his profit by manipulating the price of his commodity. A seller does not know a priori the market conditions such as the conditional probability of the buyers demand, the criteria or even the number of his seller opponents. Subject to this lack of information, the process of market price formation can be simulated as a game between stochastic automata. As time unfolds each seller-automaton learns the market conditions and changes accordingly its price probabilities in view of maximizing its profit. A simple reinforcement scheme is introduced for the design of such automata. The simulation results demonstrate the expediency of the automata behavior.

scholarly journals A critical evaluation of the proposed treatment of special cost advantages in excessive prices law

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-618
Author(s):  
Andrew Sylvester
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Cost Advantage ◽  
Dominant Firm ◽  
Appeal Court ◽  
Cost Of Production ◽  
The Cost

Firms have a special cost advantage when they receive a discount or subsidy without assuming any risk or without being innovative. It is thus a received benefit, rather than an earned benefit, which results in a cost below the normal competitive level. The treatment of these special cost advantages has been a complicating factor when the firm in question is a dominant firm accused of charging an excessive price. The relevant benchmark against which to assess the price charged by the firm is the notional competitive market price, which in turn is linked to the cost of production under competitive conditions. This led to the Competition Appeal Court recommending that special cost advantages should be excluded from the cost build-up of the dominant firm when assessing excessive prices allegations. This would artificially inflate the dominant firm’s costs and reduce the likelihood of a finding against the firm. This recommendation by the CAC has a number of theoretical and practical problems, and it remains unclear how special cost advantages should be treated in South African competition law cases. 

Neoliberalism, Rationality, and the Savage Slot

2019 ◽  
pp. 177-195
Author(s):  
Julia Elyachar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Public ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Free Market Price ◽  
History Of

This chapter upends usual discussions of neoliberal governmentality by focusing on the relation of neoliberalism to the irrational. The central task of neoliberalism in its early days was to resurrect a discredited liberalism. WW I and the problematic Versailles Peace of 1919 convinced many that irrationality lay at the core of the “civilized” European world. Those who became neo-liberal (before the hyphen was eliminated) embraced that which was irrational while resolutely attacking all kinds of collectivism. Early neoliberals such as Mises equated socialists with savages and put socialists in what Trouillot called “The Savage Slot,” thanks to their wilful overthrow of the free market price system, without which rationality itself could not exist. Hayek and the next generation of neoliberals shifted the source of irrationality into the physiology of individual humans. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union against which early neoliberal polemics were aimed, tacit knowledge moved out of the body to the corporation via Jean Lave’s concept of communities of practice. The chapter draws on classic works in anthropology; history of economic thought; US corporate history; and obscure annals of the public sector in Egypt to make these arguments.

Markets and Contractual Fairness

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223
Author(s):  
Nathan B. Oman
Keyword(s):  
Market Price ◽  
Formal Theory ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Competitive Markets ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Transactional Theory ◽  
Competitive Prices ◽  
Just Price

Abstract Contract is the quintessential legal institution of a market economy, but the contemporary philosophy of contract law is dominated by promissory and autonomy theories that tend to treat contract’s role in facilitating commerce as little more than a happy accident. It is thus striking that in his ambitious effort to generate a purely transactional theory of contract law Peter Benson places markets at that center of his account of transactional fairness. His argues that the abstract equality of contracting parties requires equality of exchange, an equality mediated by the just price. Echoing the scholastic tradition, Benson identifies the just price with the competitive market price. We thus have a fascinating example of an anti-functionalist, anti-distributive theory of contract that nevertheless incorporates the market as an important theoretical element. In this essay, I evaluate Benson’s use of markets, placing it within both the broader discussion of markets in contract law theory and in the larger argument that he is making about contract law. Ultimately, Benson justifies the appeal to markets not because of any attractive distributional features of competitive prices but because such prices have a formal structure that satisfies the demands of Benson’s formal theory. It is an ingenious and subtle argument. However, I am not ultimately persuaded. While I think that the rule for unconscionability cases that Benson extracts from his concept of equality of exchange is defensible, I am not persuaded by Benson’s formal approach to the fairness of markets. Rather, I will argue that competitive markets often do not have the formal features that Benson ascribes to them. Furthermore, a key aspect of his understanding of transactional fairness is best understood as resting on an attractive distributional feature of competitive markets rather than on their formal structure.

Determination of Prices of the Tourist Product / Установка цены на туристский продукт

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
Dorota Chudy - Hyski ◽  
Valeri Krutikov
Keyword(s):  
Product Information ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Competitive Position ◽  
Tourism Product ◽  
The Subject

The subject of the paper is determination of prices of the tourist product in a competitive market. The issue of the article covers the question of prices as the most important product information and the most important factor influencing the competitive position of the tourist product. In the sphere of the taken issues, the hospitality product was presented in a special way as a particular example of the offer on the tourist market. The paper presents methods for determination of prices of the tourism product, taking into account issues of the phenomenon of competitive tourist market. Among the methods of determining the market price of a product there were indicated a method based on production costs, demand method, and a method based on the analysis of competitors ‘prices. These were presented on the example of the hospitality product.

Burke on Political Economy: The Nature and Extent of State Authority

1987 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Conniff
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Rule Making

The interpretation of Edmund Burke as a laissez-faire economist has a long pedigree but is inaccurate. Rather, Burke is best seen as a moderate Whig who believed that governmental social and economic policy should be based on pragmatic and prudential considerations. However, utilitarian rule-making makes most sense when the rules can be formulated in terms of realizing some more abstract goal. This goal Burke obtained from his reading of the Scotch moral sense writers, who convinced him that man has an innate moral nature which can be improved through association with other men in society. Consideration of Burke's writings on a variety of specific economic and social issues, ranging from poor relief and economic reform to the slave trade, confirms this instrumental interpretation of Burke's economic thought.

The Decretists and the “Deserving Poor”

1959 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Deserving Poor ◽  
Great Mass

In spite of all the complex controversies concerning the interplay of religious ideas and economic forces at the end of the Middle Ages the investigation of the pre-existing medieval poor law has been rather neglected by modern scholars. Evidently enough attitudes toward the relief of poverty are as significant as attitudes toward the acquisition of wealth in gauging the climate of economic thought in any given age. Yet, apart from studies on hospital administration, little has been done in this field of medieval research since the pioneering works of Ratzinger, Emminghaus, Ehrle, Uhlhorn and Ashley in the nineteenth century. Since then the attitudes of social welfare experts to the problems of poor relief have radically changed and a great mass of source material unknown to the earlier writers, notably the work of the medieval canonists, has come to the attention of historians. Both these facts suggest a need for some reconsideration of medieval attitudes to the poor and to the relief of poverty.

scholarly journals A Defense of a Thomistic Concept of the Just Price

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryl Koehn ◽  
Barry Wilbratte
Keyword(s):  
Market Price ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Market Exchange ◽  
Material Costs ◽  
Just Price ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost

ABSTRACT: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.

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