[Rezension zu Gustav Lippert: Ueber die Vergleichbarkeit der Werte von internationalen Waren-Uebertragungen]

Carl Menger’s 1903 review of Gustav Lippert’s Ueber die Vergleichbarkeit der Werte von internationalen Waren-Uebertragungen assesses a study of the comparability of foreign-trade statistics. Its premise is that official figures require methodological criticism before they can reliably represent international commodity movements:

Die ungleichartige Einrichtung der amtlichen Publikationen über den Außenhandel, zumal die verschiedenen, überdies auch zumal ungenauen Feststellungsmethoden der handelspolitischen Zahlen, erschweren einerseits die Vergleichbarkeit dieser lehrten und mindern andererseits in hohem Maße ihre Verlässigkeit.

English translation: The dissimilar arrangement of the official publications on foreign trade, and especially the differing and moreover also frequently inexact methods of ascertaining the figures of commercial policy, on the one hand impede the comparability of these figures and on the other diminish their reliability to a high degree.

Menger welcomes Lippert’s attempt to establish a sounder picture through critical examination of the values assigned to reciprocal commodity transfers. His account follows the study’s progression from national estimation methods and comparative statistical surveys to a schematic presentation of trade among nine major trading states in 1891–1900, culminating in comparisons of corresponding groups of figures. The conceptual move is to make statistical comparability a condition of interpreting trade flows, rather than assume that official totals are commensurable.

Die obige Schrift muß mit Rücksicht auf die gerade gegenwärtig sich vorbereitende Erneuerung und Umgestaltung der Handelsverträge als ebenso nützlich wie zeitgemäß bezeichnet werden.

English translation: In view of the renewal and reshaping of the commercial treaties now in preparation, the above work must be described as no less useful than timely.

The closing judgment connects methodological scrutiny to current commercial policy: impending treaty revisions make reliable comparison both useful and timely.