Richard Kerschagl, Die Währungsstatistik und die Pariser Konferenz der Notenbankstatistiker (1928)

Richard Kerschagl’s journal article interprets the Paris conference of central-bank statisticians as a milestone in the transformation of monetary statistics into an internationally coordinated instrument of economic analysis and policy. Its argument moves from institutional history through the effects of wartime and postwar instability to the technical requirements of central-bank cooperation. The conference matters less for particular resolutions—which Kerschagl does not enumerate—than for consolidating an infrastructure that increasingly extensive central-bank responsibilities require.

Kerschagl begins by qualifying the apparent novelty of central-bank statistics. An earlier flowering during the nineteenth-century controversy over bimetallism and the gold standard had given way to contraction, leaving statistical activity dependent largely on individual initiative. He identifies continuities in the Austro-Hungarian Bank’s internal reports, emerging systematic work in Switzerland, France, and Germany, and the stimulus supplied by the American banking reform of 1914. Against this uneven background, the postwar expansion appears substantial: all twenty-seven European central banks now possess statistical offices, and thirteen issue regular monthly reports. These figures establish the institutional breadth of a development whose significance is also conceptual.

In der ersten Epoche waren sie mehr weniger auf die Sammlung rein währungsstatistischen Materials beschränkt, in der darauffolgenden Zeit dehnte sich die Sammlung auf das gesamte Gebiet der Wirtschaftsstatistik aus, und heute stehen wir gewissermaßen vor der dritten Epoche, nämlich vor der des Austausches des gesamten wirtschaftlichen Materials im internationalen Wege.

English translation: In the first period they were more or less confined to collecting purely monetary-statistical material; in the subsequent period, collection extended to the entire field of economic statistics; and today we stand, as it were, at the threshold of the third period, namely that of exchanging the whole body of economic material internationally.

This three-stage history supplies Kerschagl’s interpretation of the conference agenda. Its divisions into monetary statistics, general economic statistics, and organizational and exchange questions reproduce the successive enlargement of statistical work. The transition is therefore not merely toward collecting more figures. Statistical departments become centres of economic investigation, while national accumulation of information develops into international exchange. For Kerschagl, the Paris meeting gives organizational expression to a transformation already under way.

The explanation for this expansion is pointedly ambivalent: an institution intended to support monetary stability owes much of its development to monetary disorder.

Diese knappe Entwicklungsepoche, welche ihre vorläufige Krönung in der soeben stattgefundenen Konferenz der Notenbankstatistiker in Paris gefunden hat, ist — wir müssen das ruhig zugeben — zu einem nicht unerheblichen Teil ein Kind der Inflation.

English translation: This brief period of development, which has found its provisional culmination in the conference of central-bank statisticians just held in Paris, is—we must frankly admit—to a not inconsiderable extent a child of inflation.

Inflation’s enormous structural and cyclical disturbances created a wider demand for numerical accounts of economic change. Kerschagl then turns this historical explanation into an argument about learning: the impoverishment caused by war and its aftermath makes unguided experimentation too costly. Statistical analysis should extract usable knowledge from expensive experience and, where possible, establish propositions with at least limited applicability to future events. His ambition is practical rather than a claim to universal prediction. He envisages much monetary-policy activity eventually resting on systematic informational and statistical work, while acknowledging that this foundation remains partly to be constructed.

The article’s confidence in quantitative inquiry is consequently qualified by attention to competence and limits. Creating a statistical instrument does not ensure that anyone can use it effectively, much less coordinate its use across countries.

Dazu ist natürlich eine genaue Kenntnis der Grenzen und der Leistungsfähigkeit dieses Instruments ebenso unerläßlich wie die Überzeugung davon, daß gewisse Rückschläge und Fehler wie bei jeder anderen neuen Schöpfung in der ersten Zeit natürlich auch nicht völlig vermieden werden können.

English translation: For this, a precise knowledge of the limits and capabilities of this instrument is naturally just as indispensable as the recognition that certain setbacks and errors, as with any other new creation, cannot of course be entirely avoided in the initial period.

This qualification prevents the argument from equating measurement with automatic policy success. Statistics becomes increasingly indispensable because central banks’ economic tasks have expanded, but its effectiveness depends on informed practitioners, coordinated working methods, and realistic expectations. The conference’s importance lies partly in helping to create those conditions.

Kerschagl concludes by distinguishing two meanings of central-bank cooperation. One is an ideal disposition toward agreement, grounded in the conviction that another country’s monetary collapse cannot confer lasting advantage and that stabilization serves a common interest. The other consists of practical, generally contractual measures through which banks assist one another in maintaining exchange rates. His central conceptual move is to connect this second meaning to the production and circulation of knowledge.

Zu diesen technischen Voraussetzungen gehört zweifellos mit in erster Linie ein entsprechendes Zusammenarbeiten der Notenbankstatistiken.

English translation: Appropriate collaboration among central-bank statistical services undoubtedly ranks among the foremost of these technical prerequisites.

International cooperation thus requires more than goodwill: it needs working statistical relationships capable of supporting concrete assistance. Kerschagl credits Paris with establishing collaboration beyond Europe and fostering personal contacts useful to the task. The article’s lasting relevance lies in this account of statistics as an institutional condition of monetary governance—born partly from crisis, enlarged into economic research, and made effective through international organization.