The archive.

A surplus may arise from the gap between input costs and selling prices—but why does it belong to the entrepreneur? In this integrated 1885 review of books by Victor Mataja, Gustav Gross, and Eduard August Schröder, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk separates the explanation of profit’s emergence from the explanation of its recipient. He takes Mataja’s account of unequal productive opportunities and Gross’s emphasis on bargaining advantage seriously, yet finds that neither identifies what distinguishes entrepreneurial profit from wages, rent, or interest. His objection to defining entrepreneurs as profit recipients is pointed: that definition cannot then explain their receipt of profit. Without offering a finished alternative theory, the review gives readers a precise test for theories of distribution: do they explain merely how a surplus forms, or also the economic relationship through which someone receives it?

A railway company refuses to carry a colliery owner’s coal after he complains about freight charges: in this collective review, such incidents test what economic freedom means under monopoly. Assessing works by Adolf Held, Lujo Brentano and Gustav Cohn, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk distinguishes declared principles from practical results. He defends Ricardo against Held’s imputations of partisan motives, credits Christian Socialists with advancing workers’ education without accepting that they overcame class divisions, and endorses Cohn’s case for firm intervention against railway abuses. The interest lies in these discriminating judgments rather than a single programmatic position. This brief 1885 review shows how Böhm-Bawerk could defend fairness in theoretical controversy while recognizing circumstances in which private economic power made appeals to freedom an obstacle to effective protection.

In this brief 1886 review, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk recommends Georg Adler’s ninety-page study as a compact, critical introduction to Rodbertus’s social theory. His approval is specific: Adler combines concise exposition with numerous objections that Böhm-Bawerk judges mostly sound. The notice records a favourable but qualified assessment of Adler as a guide, without endorsing his title’s claim that Rodbertus founded scientific socialism or identifying which criticisms Böhm-Bawerk accepts.

Public accessibility and specialist usefulness coincide in Böhm-Bawerk’s brief joint review of M. Schraut’s books on credit organization and on trade treaties and most-favoured-nation treatment. He praises not novel doctrine but concise exposition, comprehensive coverage, and clear, measured, impartial judgment. This small notice records what Böhm-Bawerk valued in economic reference works: the capacity to orient general readers without losing scholarly value. It offers an appraisal of Schraut’s usefulness rather than an account of his substantive positions on credit or international tariff policy.

What would happen to prices if a cubic mile of pure gold were discovered and sent to the mint? Böhm-Bawerk uses this pointed hypothetical to test Richard Hildebrand’s rejection of the quantity theory of money. In this joint review, he distinguishes denying that every change in circulating money must affect prices from denying that its quantity can influence them at all. His appreciation of Hildebrand’s originality thus accompanies a precise objection: criticism can discard a sound causal insight along with an overextended doctrine. The brief comparison with L. von Hasner’s account of money adds a constructive alternative, attentive to both theoretical controversies and legal questions. Readers encounter Böhm-Bawerk judging monetary theories by what their revisions preserve as well as what they overturn.

How much can a European reader learn from an account of American economic success without accepting its political diagnosis? In this brief review of two books by Rudolf Meyer, Böhm-Bawerk distinguishes documentary value from partisan interpretation. He singles out usury and agrarian laws, often reproduced verbatim, alongside accounts of grain cultivation, meat production, and transport. Meyer blames Europe’s disadvantages chiefly on militarism, bureaucracy, and agrarian institutions; Böhm-Bawerk finds much of his commentary stimulating but resists its political one-sidedness and hostility toward economic theorists. The review offers a compact example of critical discrimination: neither those disagreements nor careless presentation cancel the usefulness of Meyer’s evidence.

How should workers injured in industrial accidents be compensated: through private-law liability claims or public-law insurance? In this brief 1886 review of T. Bödiker’s comparative study, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk identifies a reform movement toward the latter, describing existing liability claims as inadequate. His interest is practical: he values Bödiker’s clear account of European legislative developments and the laws and draft laws reproduced for consultation. Rather than assessing national systems individually, the review records Böhm-Bawerk’s favourable judgement of a guide intended for those shaping accident legislation or directly affected by it. It offers a compact glimpse of his response to a concrete question of social policy.

Beginning from the ambiguity buried in the word "Wert," this 1886 essay — revived here as No. 11 in the London School of Economics series of reprints of scarce economic tracts — separates subjective value from objective exchange value and makes the former the base of the whole science. A good's worth, Böhm-Bawerk argues, is not a property lodged in things but its marginal utility: the least important want its available stock still covers, dramatized by an isolated colonist ranking five sacks of grain from survival down to feeding parrots, and by the old puzzle that diamonds command more than water. He then carries the same logic into market price, formed through the valuations of the "marginal pairs" of buyers and sellers, and shows that the law of cost operates not beside marginal utility but within it.

Eine Nationalökonomie, die die Theorie des subjektiven Wertes nicht entwickelt, ist in die Luft gebaut.

English translation: “An economics that does not develop the theory of subjective value is built on air.”

Does identifying profit as what remains after wages adequately explain entrepreneurial income? In this brief review of A. Graziani’s Sulla teoria generale del profitto, Böhm-Bawerk isolates the Ricardian premise behind Graziani’s answer: workers’ subsistence costs largely determine wages, leaving entrepreneurs the residual product value. He rejects that explanation by reference to his earlier critique of Ricardo, rather than developing an alternative here. The review’s interest lies in this sharply bounded disagreement—and in Böhm-Bawerk’s willingness to distinguish theoretical failure from scholarly ability. His account makes Graziani’s treatment of profit as an income category distinct from both interest and wages clear, while his closing praise credits the learning and skill of a defender whose position he considers untenable.

A budget’s financial purpose is easier to explain than its legal force. In this brief review of two works by Gustav Seidler, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk identifies the meaning of budget legislation and the right to refuse taxation as obstacles to a satisfactory account of constitutional budgeting. He judges Seidler’s public-finance analysis more successful than his legal treatment, yet distinguishes disagreement with conclusions from respect for an author’s willingness to confront difficult questions. The review offers a compact example of Böhm-Bawerk’s critical standards: principled inquiry, historical grounding, and attention to scholarship. His separate approval of the first, general part of Seidler’s accounting manual rests on a different test—clear organization and concise exposition suited to teaching alongside lectures.

Does giving altruism its due require rebuilding economics, or extending an unfinished science? In this short review of Lothar Dargun, Böhm-Bawerk welcomes closer study of altruistic economic conduct while rejecting the claim that economics has understood only self-interest—and already understood it completely. His concrete test is household provision: economists’ relative silence about a father feeding his family, he argues, need not mean they have overlooked altruism; it may mean they find little there requiring explanation. That judgement makes the review worth examining: it exposes the distance between acknowledging a motive and treating it as a theoretical problem, while conceding that altruistic conduct deserves fuller attention.

Could freer competition eliminate ground rent without abolishing private ownership of land? In this brief 1887 review, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk sharply rejects O. Wachenhusen’s affirmative answer. His compressed account isolates its crucial premise: that under genuinely free competition the cheapest producer would determine the market price. Wachenhusen consequently treats rent as an effect of concentrated landownership, removable through unrestricted disposal of land and the abolition of agricultural protective tariffs. Böhm-Bawerk’s skeptical asides and ironic rendering of the promised benefits reveal his opposition, but he offers no detailed refutation. The notice lets readers examine the precise connection between a contested pricing rule and a programme of land reform—not a developed alternative theory of rent.