Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1889
Schullern-Schrattenhofen’s 1889 study recasts rent theory within Austrian marginalism. Ground rent is neither a Ricardian exception, nor a mere differential surplus, nor an effect created by private ownership; it is the value assigned to the productive service of a scarce natural factor through the value of its marginal product. The argument therefore begins with value theory, since only valued goods can become objects of economic explanation:
Die Wertqualität ist somit die unvermeidliche Voraussetzung dafür, daß ein Gut der volkswirtschaftlichen Untersuchung überhaupt unterzogen werde; diese Qualität beherrscht seine Stellung in der Wissenschaft von der Wirtschaft.
English translation: The quality of value is thus the indispensable prerequisite for any good being subjected to economic investigation at all; this quality governs its place in the science of the economy.
The book accepts Menger’s and Böhm-Bawerk’s marginal-utility framework rather than deriving it afresh. Productive goods receive value from the products dependent on them, and rent becomes a special case of the general valuation of higher-order goods. Schullern’s inquiry is deliberately analytic rather than political: it asks why rent exists and what it is, not whether the landlord ought to receive it.
His main conceptual innovation is the careful separation of “nature,” “land,” and “Bodennutzung.” Land is not treated simply as a physical surface, but as the economically relevant complex of natural substances, forces, and qualities. Land-use, however, is not the land as an eternal object; it is a temporally limited productive service within a given production period. Improvements made by labor and capital must be separated from the natural factor itself, and “raw” land-use must be distinguished from “pure” land-use. This distinction is crucial in mines and quarries, where production consumes natural substance, while agricultural and building uses can often be treated as recurring services.
From this framework follows Schullern’s central definition:
Die Grundrente ist derjenige Wert, welcher der Bodennutzung aus dem fertigen Produkte (Grenzprodukte) nach Maßgabe der Abhängigkeit desselben von der produktiven Mithilfe des wirtschaftlichen Naturfaktors an seiner Erzeugung während der Produktionszeit zufällt.
English translation: Ground rent is that value which accrues to the use of land out of the finished product (marginal product) in proportion to the latter's dependence on the productive cooperation of the economic natural factor in its production during the production period.
Rent arises when the product has value, when a natural factor contributes productively to it, and when some part of the product’s value depends on that factor because it is scarce or not fully replaceable. Labor and capital receive value according to their alternative employments; what remains attributable to the irreplaceable pure land-use is rent. Schullern thereby preserves the practical residual calculation of rent while grounding it in marginalist value theory.
The empirical discussion translates familiar rent phenomena into this language. Fertility and location matter because they reduce labor, capital, or transport costs and enlarge the value remainder dependent on land-use. Yet difference alone does not create rent: even the worst cultivated land may yield rent if the relevant natural service is scarce. Population growth, intensified cultivation, changing product prices, imports, exports, and diminishing returns all affect rent by altering either product value or the degree of dependence on the natural factor. Additional labor and capital applied to the same land need not raise rent proportionally, since the added product is normally less than proportional.
Lease and sale are explained in the same terms. The rent paid by a tenant is not the cause of ground rent, but the market price of pure land-use, formed through competing subjective valuations. Sale price is the capitalized present valuation of expected future land-uses, discounted because future goods have lower present value. Nor does private property create rent economically; ownership determines who receives a value already grounded in scarcity and productivity:
Keiner dieser Sätze enthält das Wort „Privateigentum“, oder deutet auch nur im entferntesten darauf hin.
English translation: None of these propositions contains the word "private property," nor does any of them even remotely allude to it.
The final part measures this theory against predecessors. The Physiocrats recognized nature’s productivity but lacked a satisfactory theory of value. Ricardo grasped important differential effects but mistook them for rent’s origin and remained constrained by labor-value premises. Malthus is treated more favorably for emphasizing productivity and scarcity. Later writers such as Schäffle, Mangoldt, Rodbertus, and George are criticized for detaching rent either from land-use itself or from marginal valuation. Schullern’s achievement is to turn the classical land-rent problem into a general problem of productive-goods valuation under scarcity:
Im wesentlichen gibt sich unsere Theorie als eine Reform der Lehre Ricardos
English translation: In essence our theory presents itself as a reform of Ricardo's doctrine.
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