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Calvin’s Restrictions on Interest: Guidelines for the Credit Crisis

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Abstract

Calvin’s view on the legitimacy of interest has had a great impact on the economic development of Western society. Although Calvin took a fundamentally positive attitude to interest, he also proposed several restrictions on the charging of interest. In this article, we investigate the relevance of these restrictions to the current credit crisis. We find that each of them provides a relevant interpretation of what went wrong in the buildup of the credit crisis and gives directions to improve policies of banks and governments as well.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Bart Compen for useful literature suggestions and Thorsten Beck for his comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics (Center/European Banking Center)/Department of Philosophy, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    J. J. Graafland

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  1. J. J. Graafland
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Correspondence to J. J. Graafland.

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Graafland, J.J. Calvin’s Restrictions on Interest: Guidelines for the Credit Crisis. J Bus Ethics 96, 233–248 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0462-9

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