The archive.

Economic theory cannot tell a government which ends to pursue, since those belong to value and politics, yet no rational policy is possible without it. From this double thesis Morgenstern develops the "application problem" at the heart of his 1934 study, reprinted here in the original German: because economics lacks physics-like constants and works through shifting relations, every intervention rests on contested theoretical beliefs about cause and effect. He shows how policy effects scatter unevenly, concentrated and visible losses outweighing dispersed future gains, so organized producers systematically outmaneuver diffuse consumers. Since measures interlock through the price system, the only value-free scientific principle he can offer is consistency, freedom from contradiction. Drawing on Böhm-Bawerk, he treats power as widening the zone of indeterminacy rather than abolishing economic law, and closes with a withering account of the "Vulgärökonomie" of slogans and patent remedies.

Eine flackernde Fackel ist völliger Finsternis vorzuziehen.

English translation: “A flickering torch is preferable to complete darkness.”

Hidden inside general-equilibrium theory sits a premise its authors rarely state: that agents foresee the future without error. Morgenstern treats this 'vollkommene Voraussicht' not as a harmless simplification but as a logical fault line running through theories of risk, profit, money, and the business cycle. Pressed for its meaning — whose foresight, of which events, over what horizon — the assumption collapses. In a world of interdependent agents each forecast must include others' forecasts of oneself, and the Holmes–Moriarty regress of anticipated reactions and counter-reactions has no natural stopping point. Unlimited foresight, he shows, is simply incompatible with equilibrium, while total ignorance is impossible too. What remains is a research program: expectations as heterogeneous, fallible, socially distributed variables — an early step toward the strategic reasoning of game theory.

Unbeschränkte Voraussicht und wirtschaftliches Gleichgewicht sind also miteinander unverträglich.

English translation: “Unlimited foresight and economic equilibrium are therefore incompatible with each other.”

Faithful exposition is not the same as a convincing test of a theory. In this short review of Arthur Schweitzer’s study of Spiethoff’s business-cycle theory, Oskar Morgenstern welcomes renewed attention to Spiethoff’s treatment of capital but questions the standards used to assess it. Why demand conformity to a preconceived theoretical system when the conjectures themselves remain untested? Morgenstern offers a concrete alternative: compare rival notions of “capital shortage” and investigate them statistically. His measured judgement distinguishes the value of recovering neglected work from the task of establishing its explanatory strength. The review gives readers a concise instance of economic criticism that asks not merely whether an account is faithful or systematic, but what evidence would help decide between competing explanations.

An introductory textbook can make economics intelligible without pretending that its problems are settled. In this 1939 review of Frederic Benham’s Economics, Oskar Morgenstern makes that distinction central to his praise. He values Benham’s clear explanation of indifference curves and synthesis of production theory, but especially his willingness to acknowledge where economic analysis falls short. Morgenstern would push this candor further: exposing weak spots can awaken curiosity rather than undermine instruction. His reservations about income theory, risk, and profit sharpen a compact account of what beginners need—breadth, proportion, and reasons to question apparent certainty rather than specialize prematurely.

One of the principal aims of teaching theory should be to avoid barren specialization at too early a stage.

Protecting a producer’s price can unsettle everything around it. In this 1939 address, Oskar Morgenstern examines European public monopolies through the incentives their guarantees create, rather than their formal administrative structure. Austria’s milk regulation and Czechoslovakia’s grain monopoly supply concrete cases: protected prices encourage output while consumption falls, leaving authorities to finance surpluses, restrict production, and police unofficial trade. His central contention is that each attempt to preserve the original price commitment demands further controls. Political interests in distribution help explain why retreat proves difficult. The address offers a sharply critical account of the difference between stabilizing prices and stabilizing economic life, tracing how measures intended to protect producers can shift costs onto consumers, employment, and unprotected sectors.

When do statistical graphs substantiate an economic theory, rather than merely illustrate it? In this brief review of Joseph A. Schumpeter’s Business Cycles, Oskar Morgenstern admires the attempt to connect entrepreneurial innovation and credit expansion with economic history, yet questions the evidentiary force of its statistics. His objections are concrete: specialized business-cycle measurements go unused, and graphs sometimes lack scales and index bases. Neither criticism cancels his appreciation of Schumpeter’s discussion of time series and economic waves. The review offers a compact example of methodological judgement: Morgenstern distinguishes theoretical ambition, historically informed explanation, and independently useful statistical evidence without demanding that admiration exclude disagreement.

How should a history of economic theory compare doctrines that changed in response to their critics? In this 1940 review of Gaëtan Pirou’s lectures on marginal utility, Oskar Morgenstern praises exact exposition while questioning comparisons that set early formulations against later objections. His scrutiny is concrete: Austrian attention to monopoly helps explain the challenge to classical value theory, while Pirou’s grouping of Fetter with Seligman risks confusing distinct accounts of welfare and social value. Morgenstern also asks why Carver receives more attention than Fisher. The review offers a compact encounter with his standards for intellectual history: distinguish neighboring concepts, question inherited reputations, and keep the chronology of controversy visible.

Economics cannot become exact merely by borrowing the vocabulary of mathematics; it must first clarify what utility, strategy, coalition and stability mean. From that conviction von Neumann and Morgenstern rebuild economic behavior as interdependent choice, where each participant maximizes an outcome he does not control—so games, not single-agent calculation, become the governing model. Read here in the German translation of the 1944 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, the argument runs from an axiomatic numerical utility through the minimax theorem for two-person zero-sum games, where rational play may demand mixed strategies and probability becomes part of optimal design rather than uncertainty. Extending to n-person games, they replace the single optimal outcome with stable sets of imputations—standards of behavior that resist internal domination—and turn coalitions, bargaining and market organization into formal objects against the Lausanne equilibrium tradition.

Man kann nicht exakte Methoden verwenden, solange keine Klarheit in den Begriffen und Fragen besteht, auf die sie angewendet werden sollen.

English translation: “One cannot employ exact methods so long as there is no clarity concerning the concepts and questions to which they are to be applied.”

A statistical method can succeed on artificial data without earning authority over economic observations. That distinction drives Oskar Morgenstern’s review of M. G. Kendall’s study of oscillatory time-series. Kendall’s experiments favour correlogram analysis, but Morgenstern asks whether the result follows from building the test series around the very mechanism that method assumes. His objection is concrete: the empirical Beveridge series have not been shown to share that mechanism, and economic processes may change over the span of a long record. Appreciative of Kendall’s computational labour, yet alert to emerging high-speed machines, Morgenstern argues for larger experiments with varied assumptions rather than a premature ranking of methods. This compact review shows how a seemingly technical comparison turns on what counts as evidence about the process producing the data.

A demand curve, in ordinary teaching, is a path along which buyers slide as prices change. That picture is the error Morgenstern sets out to dismantle. The curve, he argues, is first a schedule of mutually exclusive intentions at a single moment — alternative maximum bids, not a record of successive purchases. Once a buyer actually transacts, expenditure and possession change, and the remaining points no longer mean what they did; a one-variable curve is valid for exactly one transaction unless it is reconstructed through a fresh reaction function. Elasticity, price discrimination, monopolistic competition, and the cobweb theorem all inherit the flaw. What begins as immanent critique of Marshall and Schultz becomes a bridge toward a game-theoretic view of markets as strategic situations that shift with every trade.

Eine individuelle Nachfragekurve einer Variablen ist dann, ganz gleich, welches ihre Form ist, gültig nur für eine einzige Verwendung, d. h. für eine Transaktion.

English translation: “An individual demand curve of a single variable is then, whatever its shape, valid only for one single use, that is, for one transaction.”

A computer can solve a system of equations without making its answer economically trustworthy. In this brief 1949 discussion contribution, Oskar Morgenstern responds to Leontief’s input-output analysis by asking what calculation can establish when observational errors remain unknown. His concern reaches beyond misleading decimal precision: the many zero entries in industrial tables may make solutions easier and more stable while reflecting gaps in information rather than actual economic relationships. Supportive of the research programme, he nevertheless distinguishes computational feasibility from empirical warrant. Readers encounter an economist treating numerical stability, data collection, and model assumptions as connected responsibilities—not problems that faster machines can settle on their own.

Often accuracy is identified with detail; for example, the giving of figures with many decimal points when the real inaccuracy has already been permitted to enter into a much rougher figure.

Why should interchangeable factors guarantee determinate values? In this brief conference abstract, Oskar Morgenstern challenges that familiar economic assumption through game theory. He treats the extra value created by combining factors not as an awkward exception, but as something the characteristic function of an n-person game can describe. His sharper challenge concerns substitution: he points to games involving six players or factors in which substitutability does not permit values to be assigned. The examples are announced rather than demonstrated here, but the distinction is clear: interchangeability need not secure the determinate equilibrium economists seek. This compact statement shows why Morgenstern redirects attention toward the different, more complex game-theoretic notion of a “solution.”