Friedrich August von Hayek · 1932
Hayek’s brief notice reviews Edgar Pedro Bruck’s attempt to make antiquarian book pricing an object of economic analysis. Published under “IX. Verschiedenes” among the journal’s individual reviews, the piece is compressed to a single paragraph, yet its argument is clear: Hayek regards Bruck’s topic as potentially interesting but finds the treatment insufficient both as price theory and as empirical market description.
Den Nationalökonomen wird die vorliegende kleine Schrift mehr als Bücherkäufer als aus fachlichen Gründen interessieren.
English translation: Economists will find the present short work of interest more as book buyers than for professional reasons.
This opening distinction frames the whole review. Hayek does not deny that economists may care about antiquarian scientific books; rather, he treats that interest as arising chiefly from their role as book buyers. The implied standard is methodological: a work on “Preisbildung” must offer more than a familiar market anecdote or practical guidance.
Die preistheoretische Ausbeute ist recht mager.
English translation: The yield for price theory is decidedly meagre.
The central thesis is contained in this sentence. Bruck’s book, despite its title, yields little for price theory. Hayek’s criticism is not that the antiquarian book trade is too minor to analyze; indeed, the market’s rarity, heterogeneous goods, and dispersed valuations could have made it theoretically revealing. His complaint is that the work does not turn those features into a serious account of price formation.
Hayek then shifts from theory to facts, insisting that even descriptive adequacy is missing. The book does not compensate for weak theory by supplying rich empirical evidence about the trade.
Aber auch die tatsächliche Information ist keineswegs so reichhaltig, wie man erwarten dürfte.
English translation: But even the factual information is by no means as abundant as one might expect.
The most concrete failure concerns price history and simultaneous price variation. Hayek singles out two matters that would have made the subject economically useful: the movement of prices for antiquarian scientific works over time, and the dispersion of prices for identical works at the same moment.
Namentlich über die Preisentwicklung antiquarischer wissenschaftlicher Werke und die „Streuung“ der gleichzeitigen Preise gleicher Werke dürfte jeder regelmäßige Leser von Antiquariatskatalogen sich ein besseres Bild zu machen in der Lage sein, als es diese Schrift bietet.
English translation: In particular, any regular reader of antiquarian booksellers' catalogues should be able to form a better picture of the price development of second-hand scholarly works and of the 'dispersion' of contemporaneous prices for the same works than this pamphlet offers.
This passage reveals Hayek’s conceptual standard. A study of this market should illuminate temporal price development and cross-sectional price “Streuung”; without these, it cannot explain how valuation, scarcity, information, and market segmentation appear in actual prices. The comparison with the “regelmäßige Leser von Antiquariatskatalogen” is especially cutting: ordinary market familiarity surpasses the book’s scholarly result.
The final movement of the review criticizes what Hayek sees as disproportionate academic apparatus. Bruck’s seventy-one-page pamphlet is accompanied by a large bibliography, including theoretical works “von Gossen bis Wicksell.” Hayek treats this as a mismatch between the scholarly apparatus and the analysis supplied.
Daß ein derartiges Schriftchen mit dem wissenschaftlichen Apparat eines viereinhalb Seiten umfassenden Literaturverzeichnisses, darunter zwei Seiten theoretischer Werke von Gossen bis Wicksell, aufmarschiert, ist ein Unfug
English translation: That such a little tract parades the scholarly apparatus of a four-and-a-half-page bibliography, including two pages of theoretical works from Gossen to Wicksell, is a nuisance.
The word “Unfug” marks the force of Hayek’s objection. He objects to the display of theoretical lineage when the analysis itself does not earn it. His target is thus a mismatch between apparatus and achievement: economic theory is invoked but not effectively used.
Yet the review is not merely dismissive. Hayek grants that Bruck has attempted something worthwhile: to show that price formation in the antiquarian book trade requires a theory of value. But the concession only sharpens the verdict.
ein zwar lobenswerter, aber recht unzureichender Versuch
English translation: a commendable, but quite inadequate, attempt
The relevance of the piece lies in this standard of adequacy. Hayek demands that empirical price studies either produce distinctive facts or integrate their facts into a genuine value-theoretic explanation. Bruck, in his view, does neither. The review’s core move is therefore disciplinary: it separates casual market observation, bibliographic display, empirical description, and economic theory, then asks whether the work has successfully connected them. Its answer is no.
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