Joel Kaye, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century

Kaye, Joel. Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of the Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.

Kaye's monograph sets out to trace the shift in economic thought and monetary consciousness in the fourteenth century. Kaye's introduction sets up the historical backdrop to this shift, discussing the economic changes in this period of Europe that Diana Wood sets up rather effectively in her book. For example, Kaye discusses Oresme's position in the University of Paris as a method of understanding the concerns raised in De moneta more effectively. In De moneta, Oresme spends a great deal of time discussing the issues of seignorage, the changing of coin currency which could be misused to generate profit. Kaye points out that during Oresme's lifetime the currency in France was either changed or revalued more the eighty times, a period of monetary instability that most certainly had some impact on Oresme and sheds light on his text. 

For me, Kaye's plotting of the shift in economic models over this period is very interesting. Moving from Aristotle's models of arithmetic price, Kaye considers how philosophers such as Jean Buridan and Walter Burley modified Aristotle to reflect their own perception of the shifting medieval marketplace. Specifically, Kaye rather effectively lays out how the perception of market exchanges in these philosopher's writing expanded to include a need based economy. Somewhat of an early model of supply and demand, the need of the buyer and seller respectively is considered to have an impact on the just price of a commodity or labor. Rather than just price occupying a fixed point in exchange, just price instead falls in the range between the need of the buyer and seller. Thus, a starving man would certainly be more willing to pay a greater price for bread, or a fruit seller may be willing to sell his fruit at a significantly reduced cost if it is close to spoiling. While I would agree with some of the book reviews that Kaye's book does not do much to discuss this impact in labor prices and wages, the models that Kaye plots out are incredibly useful regardless.