Der Einfluß des Zinses auf Sparen und Investieren

This file is a single-author theoretical economics article—the German version of Mahr’s 1955 Italian essay. Its scope is conceptual: it reconstructs saving, investment, hoarding, liquidity, risk, and net interest in order to ask what interest can and cannot explain. The opening announces this methodological priority:

Bei einer Untersuchung, die sich mit Problemen des Sparens, Investierens und Zinses beschäftigt, erscheint es dringend geboten, vorerst die verwendeten Begriffe zu definieren.

English translation: In an investigation concerned with problems of saving, investment, and interest, it appears urgently necessary first to define the concepts employed.

Mahr’s central thesis is that interest has no simple, general effect on the quantity saved, but it strongly affects the form in which savings are held and therefore the supply of funds for productive investment. Saving means withholding income to build reserves; investment means using savings for future utility; hoarding is neither consumption nor investment. This distinction rejects the Keynesian statistical identity of saving and investment as a tool for causal analysis.

Nach unserer Definition können ersparte Einkommensteile sowohl investiert als auch gehortet werden, wobei wir als Horten den Vorgang bezeichnen wollen, daß Einkommensteile bis zum Schluß der Einkommensperiode weder für Konsumzwecke verausgabt noch investiert werden.

English translation: According to our definition, saved portions of income can be either invested or hoarded, whereby by hoarding we mean the process by which parts of income are, up to the end of the income period, neither spent for consumption purposes nor invested.

The first part of the essay therefore dismantles the notion of “the” interest rate. Actual rates differ by term, market, risk, security, and realizability: deposits, bonds, shares, mortgages, and direct enterprise investments do not yield the same thing. Mahr separates risk premia from liquidity premia and narrows liquidity to immediately realizable claims or assets rapidly saleable. His critique of Keynes is precise, not dismissive: liquidity preference explains important additions to interest, especially resale risk and time-binding, but not the underlying net interest paid even on safe, callable deposits.

Aber es geht viel zu weit, die Zinserklärung zur Gänze auf dem Liquiditätsstreben zu basieren, wie dies Keynes tut.

English translation: But it goes much too far to base the explanation of interest entirely on the striving for liquidity, as Keynes does.

The second part examines saving motives. Mahr rejects the older view that interest is simply a reward that makes people save more. People do not usually forgo present consumption merely to consume more identical goods later; they save for old age, illness, family provision, housing, entrepreneurial independence, status, power, or wealth itself. Higher interest can make future goals easier to reach, yet it can also reduce the amount one must save to reach a fixed target. Hence theory alone cannot assign a sign to the saving response.

Eine eindeutige und überzeugende Antwort auf diese Frage kann durch theoretische Erwägungen nicht gegeben werden.

English translation: An unambiguous and convincing answer to this question cannot be given by theoretical considerations.

Mahr is firmer about allocation. Since the volume of saving depends chiefly on income, the interest rate matters most by directing saved income toward or away from productive capital. If net interest became extremely low or disappeared, savers would not simply consume everything. They would hoard cash, accumulate durable valuables, build or improve owner-occupied housing, or buy land—forms of Sachsparen that preserve wealth and may provide consumption benefits. Cash hoarding depresses income by interrupting circulation; construction or land purchases need not do so immediately, but they draw resources away from industrial and commercial capital formation.

This leads to the essay’s argument against a spontaneous fall of net interest to zero. A lower rate expands capital demand for mechanization, housing, public borrowing, transport, and new technical uses. At the same time it makes hoarding, land, and durable real assets more attractive relative to lending. These forces prevent the net rate, abstracting from risk and liquidity, from vanishing by market development alone.

Angesichts des Zusammenwirkens aller dieser Umstände erscheint es von vornherein völlig ausgeschlossen, daß der Nettozins jemals von selbst auf null sinken könnte.

English translation: In view of the interplay of all these circumstances, it appears from the outset entirely out of the question that the net rate of interest could ever fall to zero of its own accord.

Mahr’s positive conceptual move is to add a premium for productive employment of wealth. Observable rates include risk and liquidity components, but also a return necessary to induce owners of wealth to choose credit and productive investment over cash, housing, land, or other reserve assets.

In Wahrheit enthalten die empirisch zu beobachtenden Zinssätze neben Risikoprämien verschiedener Art eine Komponente, die man am ehesten als Prämie für die produktive Verwertung des Vermögens bezeichnen könnte.

English translation: In truth, the interest rates observable empirically contain, alongside risk premiums of various kinds, a component that could most aptly be described as a premium for the productive utilization of wealth.

The article’s structure moves from definitions, to the anatomy of interest rates, to saving motives, to low-interest portfolio shifts, and finally to a qualified productivity theory of interest. Its lasting relevance lies in the three separations that organize the argument: saving from investment, liquidity from risk, and the quantity of saving from the allocation of savings.