Richard Kerschagl, Die ausländische Geld- und Währungsliteratur seit dem Ende des Weltkrieges (1925)

Richard Kerschagl’s signed literature review surveys foreign monetary scholarship against the disruption of international intellectual exchange caused by the First World War:

Die kriegerischen Ereignisse des Jahres 1914 haben die wissenschaftlichen Beziehungen insbesondere auch unter den Volkswirtschaftlern der einzelnen Staaten der Welt auf viele Jahre unterbrochen.

English translation: The military events of 1914 interrupted scholarly relations, particularly among the economists of the world’s individual states, for many years.

War, inflation, and economic hardship frame the review’s practical purpose: restoring German-speaking economists’ access to an international discussion. Translations had made Cassel and Keynes familiar, but much foreign research remained less accessible. Kerschagl therefore prioritizes untranslated works. His organization distinguishes monetary theory, monetary policy, and monetary history, enabling him to assess conceptual innovation separately from practical proposals and documentary achievement.

The theoretical discussion combines openness to unfamiliar approaches with skepticism about their novelty. Foster and Catchings’s Money follows monetary income through wages and capital income, recalling Quesnay’s economic tableau while emphasizing practical questions and empirical examples. Their account of interest as a necessary complement to a monetary economy based on private property and individual initiative interests Kerschagl because its starting point differs from continental approaches. Nogaro’s criticism of mechanical quantity theory is accomplished but not fundamentally new. Knapp’s English reception demonstrates the international methodological influence of his state theory without establishing its usefulness for monetary policy. Influence, originality, and practical applicability thus remain distinct criteria.

Kerschagl’s judgments also depend on whether monetary explanations connect institutions to the wider economic order. His approval of an argument linking gold currency to market freedom illustrates this concern:

Die Konklusionen, die zum Schluß über die engen Zusammenhänge der Goldwährung mit der mehr oder weniger hergestellten Freiheit der Märkte in der kapitalistischen Wirtschaft gezogen werden, sind zweifellos richtig und hübsch formuliert.

English translation: The conclusions drawn at the end concerning the close connections between the gold standard and the greater or lesser degree of market freedom established in the capitalist economy are undoubtedly correct and elegantly formulated.

This endorsement helps explain why the policy survey cannot be reduced to a choice between gold and paper money. The operation of any monetary arrangement depends on markets, credit institutions, and the objectives assigned to monetary authorities. The transition to policy also marks a change in the scale of the literature:

Ungleich größer ist die Zahl jener Bücher, welche die Währungspolitik zum Gegenstande haben.

English translation: Far greater is the number of books whose subject is monetary policy.

Stabilization and deflation dominate this larger field. Cassel advocates rapid stabilization at the currency value already reached rather than attempts to restore a higher value. Rist reaches a similar recommendation through a different argument: Cassel emphasizes that deflation is not worth its sacrifices, whereas Rist stresses its practical infeasibility. Agreement about policy therefore does not imply agreement about causes or constraints.

The Czechoslovak controversy sharpens this distinction. Picot finds little substantial effect from Rašin’s deflation beyond demonstrating governmental resolve against inflation; Rašin explains the limited results through external constraints and the failure to implement his fuller program. Kerschagl criticizes Picot’s political coloring while valuing Rašin’s account, preserving the disagreement over how outcomes should be interpreted. Beckhart’s more favorable assessment of American deflation further prevents the survey from suggesting a uniform international verdict.

The most consequential development is the Anglo-American tendency to make purchasing-power stability an explicit central-bank responsibility. Hawtrey proposes extensive credit control. Bellerby connects monetary instability with crises and unemployment, advocating price stabilization while anticipating movement beyond metallic currency. Keynes gives price stability priority over exchange rates or gold parity, but Kerschagl finds insufficient guidance for implementing that objective. Flux, by contrast, defends gold as an imperfect yet preferable automatic regulator. Purchasing-power-parity theory makes domestic prices and exchange rates less sharply opposed than continental readers might suppose. Nevertheless, Kerschagl questions both the technical completeness of reform proposals and the strength of the reaction against gold’s wartime and postwar failures.

Monetary history supplies an indispensable evidentiary counterpart. Studies of the Austrian crown and the liquidation of the Austro-Hungarian Bank document inflation, currency separation, and institutional dissolution. Kerschagl distinguishes an insider’s authority as a witness from the validity of that witness’s interpretation. Likewise, he regards Katzenellenbaum’s Russian study as theoretically weak but empirically valuable for its treatment of inflation, stabilization, and reconstructed credit institutions. Studies of other national experiences widen the comparative record.

The review ultimately places its strongest confidence in historical and statistical documentation, particularly League of Nations publications. Such materials preserve experiences for later, less immediately burdened generations to reassess. Kerschagl’s contribution is therefore twofold: he identifies an emerging policy emphasis on purchasing power and credit management while insisting that monetary knowledge requires reliable documentation, comparative evidence, and careful separation of observation from explanation.