| dc.description.abstract | Odd Langholm, a prominent Scandinavian scholar of early economic thought,
provides us with cues on how to re-consider the fundamental assumptions that
go into economic valuation and modelling. “Fair value” was not controversial
among the scholastics. A thing is obviously worth what it can be sold for! Problems
arise when the parties to a contract disagree – when the market is too thin to
produce a fair price. Use a model, and/or give an account of how you calculated,
is today’s solution. The scholastics, not yet accustomed to econometric models,
assumed that contracts are entered into by competent individuals with free will,
and given that money, the counting medium, has no intrinsic value (it is worth
what is stamped on the coin), it follows that a contract including interest is not
valid. The free will of either party must have been infringed upon. Be it by fraud,
force, or ignorance. Odd Langholm informs us about how the idea of the depersonalized
market as a system that produces prices, “fair values”, emerged.
The problem is not so much how scholastics contributed to current ideas on
valuation but what was lost on the way. | sv |
