Helene Lieser · 1926
Helene Lieser’s brief review examines volumes 18 and 19 of Diehl and Mombert’s Ausgewählte Lesestücke zum Studium der politischen Ökonomie, published in 1925 with an introduction by Karl Diehl. Their scope is the relative value of domestic and foreign means of payment. Lieser acknowledges the collection’s usefulness:
Wie in allen Bändchen dieser Sammlung werden interessantes Material und praktische Literaturangaben geboten.
English translation: As in all the little volumes of this collection, interesting material and practical bibliographical references are offered.
Her assessment then turns from the materials to their theoretical organization. Without undertaking a full refutation of balance-of-payments theory, she questions its central position because existing scholarly criticisms remain unanswered:
Die an ihr von so vielen berufenen Gelehrten mit unwiderlegten Argumenten geübte Kritik läßt es aber als bedenklich erscheinen, sie in den Mittelpunkt der Darstellung zu setzen.
English translation: But the criticism exercised upon it by so many competent scholars with arguments that have remained unrefuted makes it appear questionable to place it at the centre of the exposition.
The closing objection identifies what this framing neglects: Diehl’s treatment of inflation theory gives insufficient attention to the mechanism of price formation and its effects on payment transactions. The review’s conceptual move is thus to distinguish documentary value from explanatory adequacy, making the causal relation between prices and payments the test of the introduction’s theoretical account.
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