The archive.

Who should support an unemployed worker—and what work must that worker accept in return? In this 1908 policy article, Emil Perels approaches Austrian unemployment protection through European experiments and the German Imperial Statistical Office’s comparative evidence. His concern is practical: rules about culpable dismissal, acceptable wages, and occupational risk determine whether assistance prevents destitution or excludes those who need it. He provisionally favours the Ghent system of public subsidies to trade-union benefits, while confronting its central weakness: occupational solidarity helps administer support but leaves unorganized workers exposed. Perels’s comparisons show why a failed municipal fund does not settle the case against compulsory insurance, and why successful voluntary provision does not establish adequate coverage. The article exposes the judgments about responsibility and solidarity embedded in apparently technical insurance rules.

A defense of grain tariffs can concede that they raise bread prices and inflate land values—and still insist that they preserve peasant farming. This tension anchors Emil Perels’s 1912 review of recent trade-policy literature. Assessing Karl Diehl’s engagement with free-trade arguments, Perels distinguishes the merits of economic research from the political commitments its conclusions serve. His scrutiny is equally practical: proposed reforms to grain import certificates must confront labor shortages and cultivation constraints, while value-based luxury duties require workable customs valuation. Across German tariff controversies and Austrian export policy, readers encounter a reviewer attentive to costs, administrative obstacles, and the limits of statistical inference. The result shows concretely why acknowledging an opponent’s economic evidence need not produce agreement about policy.

Emergency powers could compel deliveries and suspend debts, but could they secure food or keep businesses solvent? In this 1915 article, Emil Perels examines Austria’s improvised economic response to mobilization through mid-November 1914. His sharpest example is the delayed suspension of grain duties: by the time the barrier fell, much of the available foreign supply had already been bought. He links this failure to Hungarian agrarian influence, exposing the limits of executive authority within the monarchy’s divided administration. His perspective combines criticism of such delays with sympathy for measures protecting livelihoods, including moratoria that troubled creditors. The article offers a concrete view of the gap between issuing emergency legislation and making it effective—and of Perels’s hope that wartime coordination, especially in employment services, might yield institutions worth preserving.

Releasing seized property does not by itself restore the trust on which international commerce depends. In this 1919 journal contribution, Emil Perels asks how peace treaties can undo wartime attacks on private rights without making contractual restoration economically unworkable. Writing from a perspective shaped by Central Power interests and the eastern peace settlements, he nevertheless questions the effectiveness of German retaliation. His central tension is practical: restrictions he condemns as weapons may still serve as bargaining security for reciprocal restitution. Prewar supply prices, depreciated currencies, and competing claims on scarce foreign exchange make a simple return to legal normality impossible. The work offers a concrete account of why restoring private rights requires negotiated adjustments and credible international adjudication, rather than repeal alone.

Promises of equitable commerce sit uneasily beside the exclusion of Germany and Austria from the institutions meant to secure them. In this 1920 article, Emil Perels tests the League of Nations Covenant against German and Austrian proposals for international economic cooperation. His concern is concrete: what protection do transit rights and commercial guarantees offer states denied an equal voice in their administration? Comparing treaty obligations with proposals for a world commercial treaty, he links economic rights to institutional participation rather than treating them as self-enforcing rules. His defence of the defeated powers also has limits: criticism of colonial mandates does not become a rejection of empire. The article exposes the tension between European economic interdependence and a settlement that, in Perels’s judgement, preserves the victors’ instruments of economic leverage.