Who first argued that market forces alone determine just price?

External question — Economics Stack Exchange Author: Geremia Original post: https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/60573 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Who first argued that market forces alone determine just price? Horvat, Return to Order ch. 32 "An Organic Economic Order: A Passion for Justice", § "Just Price and Markets" cites Langholm, Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought , 85: The modern mechanistic conception of the market as a suprapersonal force setting the terms to which an individual exchanger must submit was foreign to the medieval masters. Their frame of reference was a moral universe that obliged any buyer or seller to act for the common good and agree to terms of exchange accordingly, regardless of the advantage granted him by the forces of the market.

External answer — Economics Stack Exchange Author: Geremia Original post: https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/60579 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. St. Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) (✝1280) appears to be the earliest, according to what Langholm, Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought p. 85, writes right before what is quoted above: Identifying the just price with the price obtaining in the market under certain conditions was not, in itself, a controversial issue in scholastic economics. […] Long before Buridan [✝1358] and Bartolus [✝1357], [St.] Albert the Great [✝1280], in his commentary on the Sentences , defined the just price as that "which the goods sold can be valued at according to the estimation of the market at the time of the sale," a phrase frequently to be repeated in one form or another. 3434. Comm. Sent., IV, 16,46: 638: "Iustum autem pretium est, quod secundum æstimationem fori illius temporis potest valere res vendita."