4,249 works (including 483 books, 3,406 articles and 357 historical documents), 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable.
Why should interest persist in an economy without innovation or growth? In this signed encyclopedia supplement, Franz Xaver Weiß defends the temporal core of Böhm-Bawerk’s theory while correcting its appeal to the technical superiority of longer production processes. Machinery, railways, and durable housing promise future services, but building them commits resources that could satisfy present needs. For Weiß, that sacrifice—not productivity alone—helps explain interest. His criticism of Schumpeter makes the disagreement concrete: familiar, unbuilt investments can sustain demand for capital without entrepreneurial innovation. The same perspective informs his account of bank credit, which can redirect resources but cannot indefinitely remove their scarcity. Readers can follow how a dispute over capital’s productivity becomes a question about the competing claims of present consumption and future provision.