The archive.

An anonymous attempt to promote Hume’s poorly received Treatise also generated a mistaken story about the young Adam Smith. In this brief 1938 review, Hayek endorses Keynes and Sraffa’s attribution of the 1740 Abstract to Hume himself: the pamphlet anticipates revisions published later in the Treatise. He then draws out a biographical consequence. The “Mr. Smith” in Hume’s correspondence appears to have been a Dublin bookseller, not the seventeen-year-old philosopher. Hayek’s concise assessment shows how textual chronology and a corrected identification undermine supposed evidence of an early meeting between Hume and Adam Smith.

Rejecting a stationary economy need not mean rejecting equilibrium analysis. In this 1939 review of Moses Abramovitz’s An Approach to a Price Theory for a Changing Economy, Ludwig M. Lachmann draws a sharp distinction between claiming that markets tend towards equilibrium and using equilibrium to test whether entrepreneurs’ plans can fit together. He welcomes Abramovitz’s attention to investment, time and expectations, but argues that abandoning market analysis leaves those plans disconnected. Forward markets supply Lachmann’s alternative: a framework for relating expected prices across dates. This brief, pointed review offers a concrete way to reconsider the supposed opposition between equilibrium and change—and shows why Lachmann finds an implicit equilibrium concept in the very approach that rejects it.

A catalogue of books owned is not the same evidence as a list of titles encountered. This distinction anchors Hayek’s 1938 review of William A. Shaw’s edition of Joseph Massie’s bibliography of early economic writing. An omitted manuscript note records the sale of most of Massie’s collection in 1760, undermining Shaw’s account of its continued ownership. Hayek welcomes the printed volume but tests its usefulness against the manuscript: missing subject headings, cross-references and author identifications preserve knowledge that abbreviated titles alone cannot supply. This brief review shows Hayek at work as a exacting bibliographical critic, explaining concretely why a convenient printed checklist may remain an unreliable substitute for its source.

Faithfully printing a manuscript is not the same as making a usable bibliography. In this 1945 review of MacMinn, Hainds, and McCrimmon’s edition of John Stuart Mill’s hand-list, Hayek tests editorial fidelity against the needs of researchers: missing writings, misplaced dates, and an absent index all obstruct access. He also supplies repairs, drawing on earlier notes and surviving pamphlets to identify elusive publications. His concern extends beyond accurate titles: an annotation of Mill’s review of Thornton overlooks what Hayek identifies as its retraction of the wage-fund theory. This brief review shows Hayek at work as a bibliographical investigator, appreciative of newly accessible evidence yet attentive to the practical details that allow readers to trace changes in Mill’s thought.

What should an economics textbook explain rather than take for granted? In this brief review of F. Zeuthen’s Economic Theory and Method, G. L. S. Shackle defends methodological reflection as part of a student’s education, not a preamble to skip. He values Zeuthen’s account of Walrasian interdependence and the annotated references that lead readers into original research. Yet his praise leaves room for precise objections: counting equations and unknowns does not settle determinacy, and orthodox dynamics still resembles temporary huts beside a ruined static Acropolis. The review offers a compact view of Shackle’s standards for theoretical teaching—clarity without intellectual shortcuts—and his suspicion that economics has yet to reckon adequately with time.

Profits need not fall for a boom to end: they may simply cease to exceed entrepreneurs’ rising expectations. In this review of G. L. S. Shackle’s Expectations, Investment and Income, Ludwig M. Lachmann welcomes that possibility but presses a harder question: why do expectations change, and why should producers respond alike? His criticism distinguishes an explanation of individual investment decisions from an explanation of economy-wide turning points. Pauses to consolidate existing businesses, he argues, cannot account for the sudden growth of new industries; invoking disappointed expectations leaves entrepreneurial exuberance unexplained. His approval of Shackle’s asymmetric multiplier—different responses to rising and falling incomes—makes this a discriminating assessment of what expectations-based cycle theory promises and what it still needs to explain.

A monthly devoted solely to economics, launched in wartime Algiers, earns Hayek’s encouragement in this brief 1944 review. Reading the first, third, and fourth issues of La Revue Economique et Sociale, he notes a revealing contrast: a journal apparently intended for reconstruction and Allied information exchange devotes much of its space to broader questions about the state, liberalism, monopoly, and capitalism. His praise concerns the courage and resources needed to sustain such a forum, rather than agreement with its contributors’ doctrines. The review offers a compact glimpse of Hayek as a supporter of economic discussion across borders, attentive both to intellectual scope and to the practical conditions of publication.

In this brief review of Émile Cailliet’s La tradition littéraire des idéologues, Hayek finds material for an economic history the book itself does not attempt: the transmission of Condillac’s subjective approach to value through the French idéologues and their circle. His praise comes with a pointed reservation. Does treating these thinkers as precursors of Comtean positivism obscure the moderation that distinguished them from their supposed successors? Hayek credits Cailliet’s philosophical contextualization while questioning a genealogy that gives provocative naturalistic statements more weight than intellectual restraint. The review offers a compact glimpse of Hayek as a reader of intellectual history, attentive both to neglected contributions to utility theory and to the distortions of interpreting thinkers chiefly through what followed them.

A law enacted by proper constitutional procedures is not necessarily a general rule applying to unknown people and unforeseen circumstances. This distinction gives Hayek’s brief 1944 review of John H. Hallowell’s study its interest beyond the verdict on the book. Hallowell addresses liberalism’s decline in German politico-legal thought; Hayek questions whether his historical evidence and legal vocabulary can explain it. He accepts the importance of studying the transformation of the Rechtsstaat but criticizes reliance on secondary sources and ambiguities in “positivism” and “formal” law. The review offers a concentrated encounter with Hayek’s standards for intellectual history—and with the difference between lawful enactment and the character of the rules enacted.

A history of economic theory is not the same undertaking as a history of the ideals governing economic policy. This distinction sharpens Hayek’s brief 1944 review of J. F. Normano’s The Spirit of American Economics and A. R. M. Lower’s Canadian supplement. Against Normano’s search for a distinctively American spirit, Hayek points to the neglect of theoretical achievement, exemplified by the cursory treatment of F. W. Taussig. Yet he also asks more of policy history: political and economic circumstances, rather than labels assigning doctrines to nations or classes. His criticism of Lower’s exclusion of living economists reinforces the question of what such a history should explain. The review offers a compact encounter with Hayek’s standards for judging histories of economic thought.

Even Soviet orders and “Hero” titles came with substantial financial benefits. In this brief 1945 review of Abram Bergson’s The Structure of Soviet Wages, Friedrich August von Hayek singles out the tension between egalitarian policy and reliance on monetary rewards. He praises Bergson’s empirical care while acknowledging the limits of the available data and of quartile ratios as measures of inequality. His particular interest is Bergson’s comparison of Soviet industrial earnings in 1928 with American earnings in 1904, which found closely similar inequality. The review offers a compact encounter with Hayek as a reader of economic evidence: attentive to incentives, but also to the qualifications that distinguish a measured comparison from a sweeping verdict on Soviet wages.

Rising real wages do not by themselves establish that poverty has receded. In this review, published in English translation in 1931, Emil Lederer examines the first volume of The New Survey of London Life and Labour through that distinction. He values Charles Booth’s combination of statistical classification and intimate household observation, but asks what happens when its measures are carried across forty years of changing expectations. Deteriorating housing, commuting costs and lost leisure complicate the apparent gains in purchasing power; London’s locally rooted poor also challenge explanations centred on migration. Lederer’s favourable but questioning assessment shows what historical comparison demands of a social survey: evidence not merely of higher incomes, but of how economic change alters the conditions and possibilities of working-class life.