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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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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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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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0462-9