The theory and practice of the just wage

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Abstract
The theory and practice of the just wage are neglected subjects and the sources for investigating them are not obvious. Biblical exegies and jurisprudence on Roman law, from both late antiquity and the central Middle Ages, emphasized that the just wage resulted from fair bargaining, but also that this wage should not fall below subsistence. Religion and the law encouraged people to honor contracts and to avoid envy and complaints. Yet labor was not merely another commodity to be valued to decieving or coercing people. Work contracts from medieval Genoa reveal the results of this bargaining, tailored to the circumstances of the moment. Legislation in the period of the bubonic plague attempted to solved some new problems as theory and practice copied with labor shortages. Fair bargaining had tended to benefit employers, since the market for labor did not exist to provide employment, but to compel people to work.

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