A MARGIN NOTE ON MEDIEVAL THOUGHT ABOUT MONEY AND THE INTEREST RATE

Stefano Figuera (sfiguera@lex.unict.it)
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Stefano Figuera: Universita` di Catania, Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Catania

Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, 2017, vol. 125, issue 1, 43-65

Abstract: In the medieval period, the issue of interest was highly significant in economic discussion. Despite a shared vision of money, the Islamic world and Christian West in the late middle ages had different attitudes to the legitimacy of interest. This divergence has been interpreted by neo-Institutionalist theory in the light of the religious institutions’ power to influence the economic side of society. Conclusions differ if the analysis comes from a Veblenian Institutionalist perspective. This approach in fact shows that while in Christian Europe interest rate theory developed hand-in-hand with the unfolding of the multiple functions of money in a society gradually evolving towards capitalism and with the secularization of economics, in the Islamic West, partly due to a different development of the socio-economic fabric, there were contrasting outcomes both in the role played by monetary financial institutions and in the developments of theoretical thought.

Keywords: Interest; Money; Islamic Economic Thought; Christian Economic Thought. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B11 B31 E42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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