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Financial History Final Paper

Usury: the historical justification of financial regulation.

Preliminary considerations Few people question the importance of regulation in biological processes. From the physiological regulation of body temperature to the molecular regulation of gene expression, life depends on a state of dynamic balance that must be controlled by positive or negative feedback mechanisms. In almost every other field, however, regulation becomes a matter of heated debate and polarized ideology. In a world that is still recovering from the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, it seems particularly relevant to address the topic of regulation in the field of finance. Finance is indeed especially affected by the dichotomy between those who defend regulation and those who criticize it. The positive correlation between risk and return amplify the opposition between those who profit from a lack of regulation and those who are most likely to bear the losses. Both sides advocate action on this matter. For instance, economists and politicians multiply calls for financial regulation in a time when free market orthodoxy seems to have lost much of its steam. But, is regulation necessary? Is regulation a threat to economic growth? Is regulation the cause or the solution to the problem? It is hard to give an absolute answer to these questions. It is however important to frame the discussion in a context that gives financial regulation the historical importance it deserves. Such framing will help elucidate the broader objectives that regulation entails.

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Among many other causes of the financial crisis, predatory lending practices have a particular significance and help illustrate the historical ubiquity of financial regulation. Defined as an unscrupulous practice carried out by a lender to entice a borrower in taking a mortgage that carries high fees and high interest rates1, predatory lending has been pointed out as one of the main detonators of the housing bubble. Massive accumulation of non-performing loans and sinking collateral prices brought down many fraudulent financial schemes on the eve of Lehmans Brothers bankruptcy. Regulated in some states but not necessarily illegal, predatory lending has been casted as yet another example of the immorality of finance and is now a primary target of regulatory agencies that wish to reestablish limits on certain interest rates and increase transparency in lending practices. Predatory lending is nothing more than a modern type of usury. Two aspects of predatory lending represent a constant in the historical understanding of usury: First, the idea of charging unreasonable interest rates that will inevitably subjugate the borrower. Second, the immoral and reprehensible character of such practice. Although predatory lending defines the modern understanding of usury very well, its meaning has evolved through time and so has the regulation surrounding it. Identified in the oldest pieces of recorded history like the Code of Hammurabi, restrictions against usury have populated legislative texts and religious codes for millennia. The Greek and the Romans denounced it as an immoral practice that creates something out of nothing. During the Middle ages, the catholic church generalized usury to all kinds of interest, and today, Islamic finance still prohibits riba (usury). Besides reviewing the historical evolution of usury, this paper will try to rationalize its almost universal condemnation. Regulation of usury is often based on moral grounds (even today, charging excessive interest rates is first seen as morally wrong) but its justification has broader implications. Understanding those implications is understanding why financial regulation is an almost natural reaction to financial threats created by dangerous practices that affect both individuals and
1 http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory_lending.asp

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groups. Whether such regulation is effective or not will not play a role in the historical description of usury restrictions. The study of those regulations will however enhance the understanding of the relationship between human beings and money and will allow us to see financial regulation with a more pragmatic and less ideological eye. The rationale behind money lending and interest Before starting a historical review of the concept of usury, it is important to understand some differences between the proto-banking systems that existed in Ancient times and the financial system that characterizes our modern globalized economy. Banking is probably as old as money itself. Money appeared as a rational solution that simplifies the exchange process by diminishing the number of intermediary goods that would be otherwise bartered. Money is not only a medium of exchange: by establishing a unit of account money becomes a store of value. The capacity to store value represents the biggest innovation money introduces2: such characteristic makes of money an intertemporal good and in particular a good that can be valued and understood in the context of future transactions. As a consequence saving and lending appear as an intertemporal transaction in which individuals trade present consumption (consumption being the product of exchange) with future exchange. Such transaction is only rational if there is an expected gain from the intertemporal trade-off: interest could be interpreted as the rational conclusion of delayed gratification. It is important to note that interest is held in its broader sense and does not necessary imply a money payment. This attempt to explain the rationale behind lending and interest is relatively simplistic and ignores many other factors that play a role in the market for credit. However, it gives a coherent vision of the incentive mechanisms that push individuals to lend money and ask some kind of return on such transaction. 2 Whykes (2003) PAGE 3

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Evidence of money lending is present in the Code of Hammurabi, more than seventeen centuries BC. It is unclear how banking was handled at that time, but many provisions in the Code of Hammurabi point towards regulated private transactions among individuals or transactions involving a centralized power (probably the temple). It is very likely that most loans involved rich merchants with excess capital and farmers in need of liquidity or burdened already in high debt3. Paragraph 49 of the Code of Hammurabi gives a great insight in this concern: 49. If any one take money from a merchant, and give the merchant a field tillable for corn or sesame and order him to plant corn or sesame in the field, and to harvest the crop; if the cultivator plant corn or sesame in the field, at the harvest the corn or sesame that is in the field shall belong to the owner of the field and he shall pay corn as rent, for the money he received from the merchant, and the livelihood of the cultivator shall he give to the merchant.4 Paragraph 49 describes a collateralized transaction in which interest is paid out of the harvest yield. Regulation on this issue shows that lending was a common practice and although the code of Hammurabi is restricted to a specific geographic region in Mesopotamia, there is evidence of lending and pawnbroking in Imperial China during the same period and in other several regions afterwards5. In Ancient times private lending described the relationship between a rich owner and poor farmers and merchants in need of liquidity. This is mostly evident in Ancient Greece or Imperial Rome but the pattern was still alive after the Renaissance where it was immortalized by the Famiglia de Medici. The mechanisms of money creation did not depend, as they do today, on the leverages offered by the central bank and the multiplier effect. Although bank deposits developed over the centuries, monetary creation was generally limited my the merchants wealth6. Collaterals often secured
3 Lewison (1999) 4 http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/ham/ham05.htm 5 Mews and Abraham (2007) 6 Id.

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lending and as we said, the concept of interest rates was a well-known mechanism. Such characteristics describe a system highly fragmented and thus prone to excess and hard to control. We are excluding from this analysis any kind of institutional lending (such as charities or government debt mechanisms). Under such a fragmented system it is logical that many of the regulations that applied to banking practices took the form of a moral condemnation. Progressively, law integrated such condemnation, but not all cultures took the same approach and many cultures legalized many immoral banking activities while at the same time condemning them under religious and less biding societal codes. This is especially true in India or among Jewish merchants. In the next few paragraphs we analyze the rules and attitudes that different civilizations sustained against usury. Once this analysis is made, the concrete causes of such restrictions will be developed and will hopefully help understand how regulation responded to several threats based on moral grounds and especially, on more pragmatic economic realities. Usury in Ancient India: the example of an unregulated catastrophe Among the oldest references to laws restricting interest on loans the Hammurabi Code has already been cited. However, it is not the only example. References to usury can be traced back to the oldest sacred Vedic texts in Ancient India (2000-1400 BC). The fact that money lending is such a widespread practice and that interest always appears as a collateral effect to this practice is a sign of the quasi-universal nature of money lending and interest charging and strengthens the rational argument of interest as a rewarding mechanism for delayed gratification. In the context of the Vedic texts usury is defined in relation to a normative interest rate of 20% per month7. Although usury was not condemned it was regulated and relegated to a specific cast: the Vaishya. Relatively powerful, the Vaishya cast was clearly an inferior cast in moral terms, which brings us back to the idea that usurers are intrinsically immoral. More recent Buddhist and Hindi texts dating from the
7 http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe14/sbe1443.htm#fr_879

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second to seventh centuries before Christ condemn usury in a clearer way. For instance, it is stated that Vasishtha, a prominent lawmaker, had drafted legislation that criminalized the practice of usury by rich Brahmans and Kshatriyas, the highest members Vedic-Hindu social system8. Once again, the pattern of rich vs. poor and wise vs. immoral seems to characterize the relationship of those who can profit from usury and those who are more likely to be subjected to it. Indias definition of usury evolved with time. Usury in Medieval India has been the subject of many studies that show its widespread existence and its catastrophic effects9. Besides money lending, several forms of usury prevailed in many Indian villages in which credit appeared in close association with commerce. Usurers contributed to the pauperization of many regions in India, and its influence was so important that the debt burden among the lowest casts became a public issue in which the medieval state had to intervene10. In addition, commercial usury deeply penetrated rural life. The cast system was completely compatible with the domination and subjugation relationships created by commercial agreements on loans and a specific cast of usurers, the Banya (the money-changers), established a quasi monopoly in the lending business. The interesting thing with usury in medieval India, is that the State ignored old texts condemning usury and always came to the defense of the creditor. Debtors, if they were poor, enjoyed hardly any protection. Usury progressively became the Poor Man's Religion of medieval India 11 . Massive dependence of farmers and artisans on usurers became an almost natural element of their every day life. Condemned but widely practiced, usury sustained the role already establish by a very rigid cast system. Its generalization might have helped many mathematical developments in medieval India but it also enforced the domination of lower casts and brought poverty to millions of Indians dependent on extremely expensive credits.
8 Habib (1964) 9 See Bibliography Habib (1964) 10 Id. 11 Visser and McIntosh (1998)

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Usury in the main monotheist religions: different paths and different effects Two types of legislative tools characterize ancient societies: the rule of the law created by Kings, Emperors and Republicans or the rule of God present in religious texts and very often apply the same kind of formality that more secular legislation utilized to establish the rules that would govern society. Usury was present among the main religious texts throughout the world, in particular monotheist texts. However, the history of Usury among monotheist religions is more complicated and has large ramifications. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are based on the same old-testament texts and refer to the same basic rules when it comes to usury. In Exodus 22:25, one can read If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury. Usury seems to represent more excessive interest than interest per se. In Ezekiel 18:17 that distinction becomes clearer: He withholds his hand from sin and takes no usury or excessive interest. The old testament leaves a big margin to interpretation and the specific reactions to usury take shape within the individual religions. Judaism acknowledges that interest is forbidden, discouraged or scorned. The etymology of the word interest in Hebrew (neshekh) makes allusion to a bite from the point of view of the debtor12. However many specific passages in the old testament seem to have legitimized usury among Jewish merchants. Deuteronomy 23:20 reads : Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. In other words, usury would be justified for non-Jewish persons. This characteristic of Jewish theology contributes to the stereotype of the Jewish merchant in Europe. Medieval Jewish merchants were as a matter of fact scattered all around Europe, North Africa and the Far east. However, between Jews usury was highly condemned. In addition 12 Visser and McIntosh (1998) PAGE 7

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to the biblical roots, various extensions of the prohibition of interest were based on Talmudic law. Interest known as avak ribbit could cause the annulation of a legal document. In spite of the prohibition, many ways of evading interest laws were applied by Jewish settlers and lately legitimized by adaptation to Jewish laws. For instance, under a partnership, a contract concerned with words al-pi hetter iskah could carry interest13. Regulation of usury in Islam took a much more severe form. Implemented during the Prophet Mohammeds life, riba (meaning excess) was prohibited and quickly integrated into the Islamic economic system. The Quran states in 3:130 3:130 O you who have believed, do not consume usury, doubled and multiplied, but fear Allah that you may be successful. Later in the Quran it can be read: Those who charge usury are in the same position as those controlled by the devil's influence. Islam seems to be the religion that has been the most consistent towards prohibitions of interest. Even today, Islamic banking establishes a number of ways to circumvent restrictions on riba. Nevertheless, Islamic scholars disagree on some specificities in which riba is allowed, especially in what concerns capital gains. However it may be, we see once again that usury is condemned and punished under Islam. Later on we will speculate on the reasons why such prohibitions are so important. Finally, Christianity probably holds one of the most complicated relationships with usury. Although interest in Ancient time meant excessive interest, Christianity went through centuries of debate over the definition of usury. Building on the New Testament the Catholic church decided around the 4th century AD to prohibit any kind of interest (excessive or not). Under Charlemagne usury was declared a criminal offense, and Pope Clement V made the ban on usury absolute and declared all legislation in the favor of usury null and void14.
13 Elliott (1902) 14 Whykes (2003)

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The Christian vision of usury has roots in Ancient Greece and builds on the scholastic theory. Such rigid vision culminates in the Protestant reformation schism of the 16th century. Christian restrictions on usury require a specific insight that is developed next. Usury: Ancient philosophers and scholastic Europe Ancient philosophers took a strong stance against usury. Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and most importantly Aristotle condemned usury as an immoral and unnatural practice. The philosophical argument behind such a position was the sterile nature of money. For Aristotle money exist not by nature but by law15. For this reason, interest whether small or big cannot be justified. Nothing can be created out of nothing, and sterility is a definitive state. In spite of such hard philosophy, interest was common under the Athenian republic. It wasnt until the Lex Genucia reforms taken by the Republican Rome that Greek arguments against usury resurged and manifested in civil law: interest was outlawed altogether. In practice many ways of evading legislation where found. Under heavy debt, Julius Cesar established a ceiling of 12% per year on interest rates16 (we are far from the 20% per month existing in medieval India). Such rate eventually decreased to 4 percent. With the Christianization of the Roman Empire, prohibitions on usury would be institutionalized at the highest levels. The scholastic theology played an enormous role on interpreting and adapting the classical understanding of usury to the ecclesiastical rules. Usury was rapidly assimilated to theft and scholastics like Thomas Aquinas qualified usury as a violation of natural moral law: taking the same Aristotelian argument Aquinas affirmed that usury, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the

15 Visser and McIntosh (1998) 16 Lewinson (1999)

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acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk17. Under the scholastic theology many interest free loans were created, the biggest example being the Monte di pitia. Middle Age scholastics made of usury a dogmatic issue and filled restrictions on usury with technicalities that left big loopholes that merchants tried to identify in order to go on with their business. For instance bankers tied many of their loans to free gifts (deposits in discrezione) that were nothing more than covered interest charges18. Dynamism in Florence and Venice depended on many of those schemes. The economic reality of that time would make many scholastics realize that the total prohibition of usury could damper the development of the clergy and the nobility. Several ways of evading the dogmatic considerations on usury were found by rich merchants trying to conciliate an economic reality with a theological constraint. At the same time, theological constrains were analyzed, debated and often adapted themselves to the economic reality. Venice merchants, for instance, found a very useful way of applying interest through the use of the exchange rate. Since many exchange rates fluctuated and communications between cities took weeks and even months, rate differentials provided an opportunity for merchants to bet on exchange evolutions and make big gains on currency exchanges. This practice of cambium was validated by scholastics as a useful function of facilitating foreign trade, which is essential to the support of human life19, although many of them knew very well that cambium was a technique used to procure financial gains. Usury came to be linked exclusively with loans, and if there was a way to avoid the appellative of loan restrictions on usury were likely to go unnoticed. Prohibitions on usury led to sophisticated casuistry that discredited scholastic theology and economics. The modern conception of usury: from Calvin to Adam Smith The biggest shift with the scholastic conception of usury would come with reformation. The scholastic usury theory was for many a hold on the development of
17 Fifth Lateran Council (1515)

18 Roover (2003) 19 Roover (1967)

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capitalism. The famous argument by Max Weber consisted on saying that medieval economic thought impeded catholic Europe to achieve the necessary steps to move from the economic stillness of the Middle Ages. We saw however that in spite of many restrictions on usury, the scholastic theory in spite of its doctrinal view on usury tried to adapt the scripture to the reality by justifying practices that at the end of the day relied on the same principle as usury: gains originating in financial transactions. Was the scholastic philosophy unlucky enough to focus too much on Aristotle? Calvin was decided to take a different theological approach towards usury. He chaired a committee that investigated interest rates. In fact Calvin was keen on understanding the reality of the economic system and adapt the scriptural theology to that reality20. Rapid economic growth showed the need for either a restatement of the churchs official position, subtle modification and reinterpretation of it in favor of capitalist activity, or, as in Calvins case, a genuinely theologically informed revision. Calvin swept aside centuries of scholastic interpretation and justified the necessity of interest rates as a social need. Calvin was aware of the abuses of usurers. He stated: Of course it would be good to desire that usurers were expelled from the entire world and that the name became unknown. But since that is impossible we must submit to a common utility. By common utility, Calvin expressed the idea that usury should not be condemned unless it is contrary to equity or charity. While still condemning usury, Calvin moved the issue to the level of common sense and rationality. Calvin, as we know, is the first of the Christian theologians to free the loan at interest from the moral and theological shame which the Church had weighed upon it until then; it is not however just to attribute to him the com- plete justification of liberal capitalism. His views on riches and their social ends led him to insist upon a very strict control over lending at interest; he had prophetically sensed the social ravages to which pure liberalism would lead.21
20 Whykes (2003) and Elliott (1902) 21 Whykes (2003)

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Much of the modern conception on usury is related to Calvins redefinition of

interest. Calvin did not initiate capitalism, but he contributed to move it away from religion. 18th Century enlightenment would take the lead and finish to separate religion from economic thought. It would be however false to say that the condemnation of usury stopped with Calvin. Usury was from that point understood at excess and modern liberalism in spite of the laissez-faire doctrine also portrayed a very critical view. Adam Smith recognized the problems that prohibition on interest rates would have on the credit market. Even so he favored the imposition of an interest rate ceiling: This rate ought always to be somewhat above the lowest market price, or the price which is commonly paid for the use of money by those who can give the most undoubted security22. Smith justified this view on the fact that the social costs of high interest rates produce externalities that need to be dampened. According to Smith, speculative and risk-loving investors would tend to bring the interest rate up and would shift the available credit from risky projects to more productive business investments. Such shift would create a sub-optimal equilibrium that ceilings on interest rates could correct. Adam Smiths vision was slowly replaced by a more laissez-faire mentality. Although today, usury laws exist in many countries, the United States has only some State provisions but no federal policy on interest rates. As we saw, usury has been present throughout history and almost all civilizations have condemned it even if they implicitly allowed it. In the next paragraphs we will try to examine the reasons of such universal condemnation. By rationalizing the issue we will introduce the risks that high interest rates convey. Justification for the critique of usury Usury has been condemned almost in a universal way. From the Code of Hammurabi to Adam Smith there is something about usury that makes it dangerous. 22 Jadlow (1977) PAGE 12

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What is it? In the next paragraphs we make no explicit difference between usury as the excessive interest rate and usury as the interest rate altogether. The explanations we give are of different nature and the definition of usury can be applied transversally depending on the historical and cultural framework on which it is placed. Usury: unearned income The monotheist rejection of usury is based on the fact that biblically, it is immoral to obtain gain without any effort. The rationale for banning usury was expressed at the Lateran Council in those terms: This is the proper interpretation of usury when gain is sought to be acquired from the use of a thing, not in itself fruitful (such as a flock or a field) without labour, expense or risk on the part of the lender23. For religious scholars, profits must be the results of initiative, enterprise and efficiency, and interest is opposed to this idea. In other words, usury compromises the true dignity of ordinary labor. Some would qualify this argument as nave saying that it fails to take into account measures of risk and inflation. Interest rate is a function of those measures and also includes the intertemporal delayed gratification. However, the argument of the dignity of labor is no stranger to a generation that has seen immense private losses due to risky private bets that ended up being socialized. In business school we learn that real growth comes from intelligent investments. Taking huge risks, as the practice of hedging shows, always involves a winner and a looser (a short and a long position): condemning usury as a threat to productive investment makes sense. An interesting relationship between human beings and money is exposed by this particular justification of the restrictions of usury: is money a medium or an end by itself? Keynes had established that the love of money is at the root of the worlds economic problem24. In this sense, condemnation of usury as unearned income must be understood in the framework of the ambiguous psychological construct that links 23 As cited in Encyclopedia of Religions and Ethics - Visser and McIntosh, (1998) 24 Visser and McIntosh (1998) PAGE 13

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money and individuals under a specific culture and specific values. Those values can evolve, and so will the rules surrounding the activities they affect. For instance, money as an end to itself has become less of a problem in countries that have moved towards individualism, the US being the perfect example: I like money is an argument that many often utilize to justify career choices. The Ancient prohibitions on usury go beyond the social externalities that too much risk or not enough productive labor can produce: they give us an understanding of the relationship that human beings entertained with money at that time. Usury is a formal condemnation of the idea of money being an end in itself. Usury: exploiting the poor The almost universal condemnation of usury exposes as we have already showed, the opposition between those who profit from it and those who bear the cost. That opposition has always been analogous with the opposition between rich and powerful merchants (or bankers) and needy peasants and farmers. Probably the intention behind usury restriction was not to restrict loans, but to diversify the helpful loan from the oppressive loan. We saw that in India the indiscriminate use of usury created important impoverishment. The analysis of English colonists in India would describe the ravages caused by usurious practices: It is usury - the rankest, most extortionate, most merciless usury - which eats the marrow out of the bones of raiyat [the peasant] and condemns him to a life of penury and slavery in which not only is economic production hopeless, but in which also energy and will become paralyzed and man sinks down beaten into a state of resigned fatalism from which hope is shut out and in which life drags on wearily and unprofitably as if with no object in view.25 Poor people are indeed more exposed to usury. On one hand they are the most dependent on credit for absolute necessities. On the other, they often lack the necessary financial literacy to distinguish what they can potentially afford and what they cannot. In many third world countries the practice of usury is still current and has multiplied with the development of microfinance. In India, microloans from the 25 Habib (1964) PAGE 14

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microfinance banks were linked to exploitation and pressures on poor families to sell their belongings, leading in extreme cases to humiliation and ultimately suicides: microcredit can bring communities into debt from which they cannot escape. The rationale behind restrictions on usury is strongly based on the dangers that even low interest rates can have on poor households. Usury can represent a trap to impoverishment. Along with the fact that usury establishes an opposition between the rich and the poor, there is the impression that usury not only perpetuates this division but makes it even deeper. Islamic scholars condemn usury because it contradicts the principle of distributive equity : interest in any amount is a transfer of wealth from those who lack productive assets to those who accumulate them. There is empirical evidence that interest creates a regressive distributive phenomenon. For instance in Germany, in 1982 the poorest 2.5 million households paid net 1.8 billion deutschemarks in interest while the richest 2.5 million households received more than net 34 billion deutschemarks26 in interest. In addition, the marginal utility of 1 dollar of interest paid by a poor family is much greater than the marginal utility of 1 dollar of interest received by a rich creditor. The strong negative redistribution of wealth is probably the soundest economic argument against usury. Usury: economic instability From the economic perspective the main problem of an economy based on interest is the cyclical nature of boom, bust, recession and recovery. Keynes described the tendency of the interest rate to rise in times of economic growth and the risks of liquidity traps (due to low interest rates) in case of economic recessions. The interest rate is a signal that can precipitate many crisis and make the recoveries longer. Another argument that has been used against usury and interest in general is that it is the base of present value calculation. Interest as a measure of discounting

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is for some thinkers a logic that can lead to the economical rational extinction27 of resources. The greater the rate, the faster is the present use (or investment) in a particular asset. Under this assumption a consequence of interest rates is that in evaluating long term investment projects, particularly those in which the benefits and costs are separated from each other with a long time interval, the net present value rules guide the decision maker to maximize the utility of present generations at the expense of future ones28. For some ethicists usury corrupts the natural world and the social relations by establishing incentive mechanisms that do not reflect the reality of nature and represent a threat to sustainability. Conclusion The paper introduced several situations in which usury was criticized and regulated throughout history. It also introduced several explanations for regulations some moral and some based on a more realistic approach to economic fairness and economic performance. What the different justifications of usury show us is that regulation often appeared as a response to threats that were either real or in other cases the result of a cultural heritage without much factual support. In most cases, regulations where circumvented with sophisticated techniques or new theological assessments. In other cases moral condemnation was strong but regulation was hardly respected or enforced. What is clear is that the sense of economic fairness and the idea that usury could cause an imbalanced and unsustainable system pushed many cultures to redefine it and find solutions to the externalities that it could potentially cause. Regulation in most cases served a goal. The lack of regulation (the case of India) or the excess of regulation (scholastic theology) created hostile environments. Nevertheless, the rational approach to regulation (Calvin or Adam Smith) created more consistent theories and more convincing explanations to an almost universal problem. Usury is an example of the necessity of regulation. The difficulty will always lay on finding an adequate balance under which regulation can function correctly and serve its rational role. 27 Argument developed in Visser and McIntosh (1998) 28 Visser and McIntosh (1998) PAGE 16

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Bibliography:
1. Wayne A.M. Visser and Alastair McIntosh, A short review of the historical critique of usury, Accounting, Business & Financial History, 8:2, Jul. 1998, pp. 175-189. 2. Michael Whykes, Devaluing the Scholastics: Calvins Ethics of Usury, Calvin Theological Journal 38, No. 1, 2003: 2751. 3. Calvin Elliott, Usury: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic view, 1902 4. Martin Lewison, Conflicts of Interest? The Ethics of Usury, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 22, No. 4, Dec., 1999 5. Constant J. Mews and Ibrahim Abraham, Usury and Just Compensation: Religious and Financial Ethics in Historical Perspective, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 72, No. 1, Apr., 2007 6. Raymond de Roover, The Scholastics, Usury, and Foreign Exchange, The Business History Review, Vol. 41, No. 3, Autumn, 1967 7. Joseph M. Jadlow, Adam Smith on Usury Laws, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 32, No. 4, Sep., 1977 8. Irfan Habib, Usury in Medieval India, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 6, No. 4, Jul., 1964

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