El pensamiento económico en la Escolástica Hispanoamericana

Abstract

This paper studies the process of insertion of late scholasticism in the "New World" incorporated to the Spanish domains. To this effect we have tried to take a representative sample. We have selected six authors: two theologians, two jurists and two theologian-jurists, most of them university professors. They group themselves around two centers who give birth to two economic schools: to the North, Mexico and to the South, Chuquisaca. Their study covers a period of almost three hundred years. From their works we infer that the study of scholastic Economics has been very intensive in the "New World". The development of the subjective theory of value and the theory of the formation and variation of prices has been as strong as in Spain. The same can be said of the development of the purchasing power parity theory and the quantitative theory of money. The main elements of the quantitative theory have been developed earlier by the School of Chuquisaca due to the powerful effects produced by the discovery of the silver mines of Potosí.