A Credit Market à la David Hume

Menahem Yaari ()
Additional contact information
Menahem Yaari: Department of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

No 1, Economics Working Papers from Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science

Abstract: In Book III of his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume considers the following simple interaction: "I suppose a person to have lent me a sum of money, on condition that it be restor'd in a few days, and also suppose, that after the expiration of the term agreed on, he demands the sum" and Hume asks: "What reason or motive have I to restore the money?" [1740, p. 479] The answer, he concludes, must be "that the sense of justice and injustice [which is the motive for repaying the loan] is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially, tho' necessarily, from education and human conventions." [p. 483] It is my purpose in this essay to offer formal (and modern) underpinnings for Hume's argument. I shall do so in the context of Hume's own example, cited above, where the interaction being considered is one between lender and borrower.

Keywords: lending; borrowing; credit market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2001-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sss.ias.edu/publications/papers/econpaperone.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.sss.ias.edu/publications/papers/econpaperone.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.sss.ias.edu/publications/papers/econpaperone.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.ias.edu/sss/publications/papers/econpaperone.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ads:wpaper:0001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nancy Cotterman ().