3,015 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
Freedom of river navigation did not gain the same acceptance as freedom of the seas. In this brief 1927 review of Richard Hennig’s Freie Ströme, Helene Lieser focuses on a legal uncertainty: what did the Versailles treaty mean by “internationalization”? She presents war and the peace treaties as reversing earlier gains in navigational freedom, and reports Hennig’s conclusion that a satisfactory definition would require further international agreements. Her closing judgement adds a political constraint: such agreements were desirable but unlikely under the prevailing balance of power. The review offers a compact encounter with the gap between a promise of international regulation and the conditions needed to make its meaning clear.
Statistical usefulness need not depend on new findings. In this brief 1928 review of Die deutschen Banken 1924 bis 1926, Helene Lieser credits the German Statistical Office with bringing scattered banking figures into an intelligible whole. She distinguishes the compilation’s merits from claims to originality: its material comes from existing publications and business reports, while its tables and graphics make that evidence accessible to wider audiences. The review offers a concise example of Lieser’s evaluative priorities—attention to the scope of banking statistics, their sources, and the practical value of their presentation.
An interest payment on public debt may be known to the last gold crown; private credit flows are another matter. This distinction anchors Helene Lieser’s short 1928 review of Gustav Gratz and Gustav Bokor’s third Ungarisches Wirtschaftsjahrbuch, covering 1926. She credits the yearbook’s effort at objective documentation without mistaking numerical precision for reliable knowledge. Her concrete objections concern estimates of private interest payments and foreign securities purchases, whose uncertain foundations should constrain the conclusions drawn from them. A forecast of cheaper foreign borrowing receives a similarly pointed check against subsequent experience. The review offers a compact example of economic source criticism: Lieser values the survey while showing exactly where its figures and expectations call for caution.
Helene Lieser’s brief 1930 review of Richard Kerschagl’s Die mitteleuropäischen Währungen und Notenbanken judges the collection by its practical usefulness rather than its monetary arguments. She singles out the reproduction of hard-to-access explanatory memoranda, parliamentary transcripts and committee reports, noting that chronological and subject indexes ease consultation. The notice offers a compact record of what Lieser valued in this reference work: access to institutional documents for users at home and abroad, not a new interpretation of currencies or issuing banks.
A useful commercial handbook need not make business administration the measure of every subject it contains. In this brief 1930 review of the seventh edition of Georg Obst’s Das Buch des Kaufmannes, Helene Lieser praises the work’s breadth and reference value but challenges its disciplinary hierarchy. Why should law, economic history, economics, and other fields gathered in the first volume count as merely auxiliary to business administration? Her reservation offers a precise distinction between welcoming a handbook’s practical usefulness and accepting its editor’s claims for the primacy of one discipline.
International ties, political upheaval and inflation are the features Helene Lieser singles out in this brief, approving review of Hans Puxbaum’s survey of Central European banking. She values its clear presentation and separately commends Oskar Zaglits’s appendix on mortgage credit in the principal successor states of Austria-Hungary and in Germany. The notice offers a compact record of Lieser’s assessment: cross-border connections and monetary disruption, rather than isolated national banking systems, give the survey its focus.
Greater coverage need not make a dictionary less portable. In this brief 1930 review of the German–English second volume of Hereward T. Price’s Volkswirtschaftliches Wörterbuch, Helene Lieser praises its expanded contents and organization while stressing its handy format. Her particular concern is business travel: a substantial reference tool must remain easy to carry. The notice offers a compact glimpse of her practical criteria for judging an economic dictionary, rather than an assessment of individual translations.
Finding an office is not the same as finding an official. In this brief review of the Österreichischer Amtskalender for 1930, Helene Lieser calls the directory indispensable for administrative and economic work, but proposes a practical improvement: an alphabetical list of officials alongside the systematic arrangement. Her small intervention draws attention to the difference between organizing information by institutional structure and making it accessible to someone searching by name.
Can a banking law be clearly explained without inspiring confidence in its effectiveness? In this short 1933 review, Helene Lieser separates the two questions. Comparing editions of Czechoslovakia’s 1932 banking law prepared by Ant. Jeřábek and Oswald Doernfest, she treats the substantial revision of earlier legislation as grounds for skepticism, not reassurance. Yet she credits both editors with making a difficult statute intelligible: Jeřábek through cross-references and documentary materials, Doernfest through commentary incorporating parliamentary sources. The review offers a compact example of critical discrimination—approval of the tools for understanding regulation need not imply approval of the regulation itself.
What makes an international banking reference useful during a banking crisis? In this brief 1933 review of the 1932 survey Europäische Banken, Helene Lieser weighs the value of annually updated information against coverage limited to a few representative banks per country. Her praise centres on explanation rather than balance sheets alone: how the world crisis and currency depreciation damage credit institutions, and how rescue efforts differ across countries. From the Austrian Credit-Anstalt’s reorganisation to Swedish banks’ reckoning with the Kreuger crash, her examples identify what she finds instructive in the survey—a comparative account of banking distress and attempted repair, despite its restricted institutional coverage.
Financial translation requires more than formal equivalents: jargon and differences between British and American usage can determine a dictionary’s practical value. These are Helene Lieser’s particular concerns in her brief 1933 review of the English–German first volume of K. Th. Langguth’s Handwörterbuch des Finanzwesens. She grounds her strong recommendation in spot checks made during practical use, praising coverage useful to exporters as well as bankers. The review offers a compact statement of her criteria for a financial reference work: reliability tested in use, attention to regional terminology, and inclusion of expressions that more conventional dictionaries miss.
What keeps a stock-exchange handbook useful when the rules of finance change? In this brief 1933 review of the twenty-first edition of Salings Börsen-Papiere, Helene Lieser values legal currency as much as a clear account of securities and trading. She singles out the reproduction of statutory provisions in full and the inclusion of recent measures on interest-rate reductions, banking supervision, and the Reich flight tax. Her assessment offers a compact view of the practical demands placed on financial reference works: explaining market institutions while making their changing legal framework readily consultable, including for readers outside Germany.