ECONOMIC COORDINATION AS A LEGAL ORDER: A REINTERPRETATION FROM LATE SCHOLASTICISM

Resumo

This article examines economic coordination as a process shaped by law, institutions, and organizational arrangements, placing legal structures at the center of how economic systems function. Rather than treating coordination as a result of markets or managerial design alone, the study argues that economic activity depends on normative frameworks that stabilize expectations, define rights and responsibilities, and make cooperation possible in environments marked by uncertainty and incomplete contracts. Drawing on late scholastic thought, particularly the School of Salamanca, the article revisits key categories such as just price, property, usury, and distributive justice. These are interpreted not simply as moral ideas, but as early legal devices that helped organize economic life. In this perspective, law, normativity, and economic practice are not separate domains, but interconnected elements that sustain social order. Building on this foundation, the article develops an evolutionary interpretation in which economic development is understood as a transformation of legal and institutional forms of coordination. Normative mechanisms originally expressed in scholastic reasoning gradually take shape in formal legal systems, regulatory frameworks, and corporate governance structures. Rather than disappearing, normativity becomes embedded in these arrangements, preserving its role in guiding behavior within increasingly complex organizational environments. Firms, markets, and governance structures are therefore not alternatives to normativity, but ways through which it is formalized and put into practice. By bringing together perspectives from Economic and Business Law, institutional economics, and organizational theory, the article helps bridge the gap between law and economics. It offers a way to understand contemporary challenges such as governance failures, regulatory complexity, and organizational fragmentation as problems of coordination grounded in legal structures. In doing so, it highlights the broader social importance of legal arrangements in shaping economic systems that are stable, legitimate, and capable of sustaining cooperation.