The archive.

If the “least important need” is simply the one a person sacrifices, does saying so explain the choice? In this reply to Bernardelli, Felix Kaufmann makes that problem of circularity a test for claims of necessary truth in economics. He argues that definitions can secure certainty only by leaving open whether actual behaviour conforms to them. His treatment of marginal utility distinguishes rational valuation as a definition, its applicability to conduct as an empirical assumption, and diminishing utility through satiation as a claim grounded in experience. The point is not to discard these concepts, but to establish what they can explain. This compact methodological dispute shows how an apparently unassailable economic principle can acquire explanatory content precisely by becoming open to refutation.

Can investigating the business cycle bring it to an end? Felix Kaufmann makes that absurd prospect the closing joke of this satirical song, presented in Arlene Oost-Zinner’s 2010 English translation. His speaker distrusts scientific abstraction, demands that science feed a nation, and calls on the state to halt value-neutral inquiry. These complaints become comic through their excess: the critic of scientific methods cannot explain why engines run, while a renowned institute’s board leaves one man doing all the work. The song offers a compact encounter with methodological controversy turned into performance, where anxiety about science’s limitations gives way to fear of its improbable power.

A numerical estimate can look precise before the economic relationship it measures has even been identified. In this 1953 journal article, Gerhard Tintner explains why econometrics needs more than statistical technique: theory must specify relationships that the available observations can distinguish. Demand for meat and the dynamics of corn markets give concrete form to problems of identification, omitted influences, and uncertainty. Tintner writes as a practitioner who sees numerical estimation as useful but insists on exposing its assumptions. His discussion of taxes and subsidies brings that discipline to policy: econometrics may estimate the consequences of alternative measures, but cannot choose their ethical or political ends. Readers can discover why a calculable result is not necessarily an economically warranted one.

An explanation of interest under perfect foresight need not explain interest under uncertainty. This distinction drives G. L. S. Shackle’s review of Allais’s Économie et Intérêt. After presenting Allais’s reasons why interest remains positive, Shackle questions whether money and liquidity-preference merely obscure deeper forces of thrift and productivity. Might causation also run the other way, with monetary interest rates shaping capital accumulation, income and ultimately time-preference? His objection gives readers a concrete way to distinguish what a model shows to be possible from what it establishes about economic life. Yet the review is no dismissal: Shackle balances his impatience with perfect foresight against admiration for Allais’s analytical precision and the breadth of his investigation.

The fact that a gas-fire can make a room warm does not imply that a warm room must contain a gas-fire.

A circle without its center becomes an affectionate joke about intellectual fellowship in Felix Kaufmann’s three-stanza song. Radii wander with nowhere to go, while π laments a wound measured to the thousandth decimal place. The mathematical conceit lets the Mises circle express attachment to its absent center without abandoning its taste for precision—or taking its own grief entirely seriously. Presented in Arlene Oost-Zinner’s 2010 English translation with the musical score, this small work offers a glimpse of shared scholarly language turned into sociable wit: calculation supplies the terms of sorrow, and the hoped-for return promises collective jubilation.

Who decides which differences between people should count? In this essay, republished in 1964, Alfred Schütz approaches equality through the classifications that organize everyday social life. His central distinction is between belonging to a group as its members understand it and being assigned to a category by outsiders. Racial legislation, segregation, and minority protection show how imposed classifications can make one characteristic govern a person’s entire social standing. Schütz also exposes a tension within equal opportunity: formal eligibility does not ensure that an opportunity is accessible or compatible with someone’s other commitments. The essay offers a precise way to examine why equal treatment can leave domination intact—and why preserving a group’s distinctive life may require more than removing discriminatory barriers.

Typifying consists in passing by what makes the individual unique and irreplaceable.

Simplifying payroll, Leo Illy argues, requires more room for calculation—not squeezing more figures into a single line. This practical guide replaces cramped entries and disposable working notes with a sheet for each employee and pay period, preserving the path from earnings through taxes and deductions to payment. Its worked forms make a concrete organizational problem visible: saving space at entry can mean costly reconstruction when employees ask questions or inspectors demand evidence. Illy approaches efficiency through document design, separating skilled calculation from subsequent copying and aggregation while giving employees a detailed statement. Readers can discover how an apparently modest change in paperwork redistributes work around payday and connects administrative economy with the ability to explain and verify a wage.

Should Cantillon be read for his place in economics’ ancestry, or for what his reasoning can still teach? In this 1932 review of Henry Higgs’s edition and English translation of the Essai, Hayek firmly favours the latter. His praise for making the work accessible accompanies a precise textual objection: neither the printed French nor the reconstructed English is straightforwardly the original, and the edition does not adequately distinguish its English sources. The review brings Hayek’s theoretical commitments into contact with the practical demands of scholarship. Readers can discover why he regards historical priority and conjectures about influence as less compelling than direct engagement with Cantillon’s analysis—and why access to that analysis still requires editorial transparency.

A seminar’s survival becomes a personal worry in Felix Kaufmann’s farewell song for Mises: Geneva cannot accommodate everyone, and Vienna’s departing scholars leave more than empty chairs behind. Presented in Arlene Oost-Zinner’s 2010 English translation and folk-song arrangement, the four stanzas mingle affectionate tribute with nervous humour. Drumming fingers and a recurring Latin lament sit alongside opposition to import taxes—a pointed reminder that friendship and economic conviction bound this circle together. The song offers a compact, intimate view of scholarly allegiance under the pressure of separation: its speaker honours the teacher’s new appointment while wondering what will become of the shared life he leaves behind.

A tax on written agreements can discourage people from recording their rights at all. This perverse consequence gives a concrete edge to Friedrich von Wieser’s 1906 examination of Austrian fee legislation. Beneath the statutory label of “fees,” he identifies a system dominated by transaction taxes and asks whether its charges correspond to actual capacity to pay. His economic perspective cuts across legal categories: frequent business turnover differs from durable investment, gross property value from genuine enrichment, and nominal liability from the burden ultimately borne by borrowers or sellers. Readers can discover how documentation, holding periods, liquidity, and collection procedures alter a tax’s effects—and why Wieser couples his defence of the law’s basic fiscal principles with demands for simpler rules and relief from unequal burdens.

Though its printed text is nothing but formula, this thank-you card with autograph signature is a compact witness to a political career. It acknowledges congratulations on Gustav Gross's election as president of the Austrian Reichsrat's Abgeordnetenhaus in 1917, but the catalogue record around it opens outward: Gross had sat since 1899 as deputy for the Moravian town of Iglau and ranked among the leading politicians of the German-national camp, a chairman of German protective associations. The card fuses private courtesy with institutional self-presentation, turning a personal exchange into a sign of parliamentary status. Together with its envelope addressed to Oskar Berl, it preserves in miniature the office, associational leadership, and ceremonial language through which late Habsburg politics marked its occasions.

Er war Präsident und Obmann der deutschen Schutzvereine "Südmark" und "Deutscher Schulverein" sowie Vorsitzender des "Deutschen Nationalvereins".

English translation: “He was president and chairman of the German protective associations "Südmark" and "Deutscher Schulverein," as well as chairman of the "Deutscher Nationalverein.”

Neither List’s protectionism nor free trade supplied Carl von Hock with a ready-made customs policy: he sought duties calibrated to production costs and the prospects of particular Austrian industries in world competition. This practical middle ground anchors Friedrich von Wieser’s brief dictionary portrait of the financial writer and Austrian official. Wieser’s emphasis falls on the conjunction of scholarship, administrative skill and integrity, crediting Hock with improving the conduct of officials under his direction. A further detail complicates the portrait: Hock’s strong Catholic convictions did not stop him supporting state control of elementary education. The entry offers a compact account of how economic inquiry and political independence could inform the work of a senior administrator.