The archive.

Can a theory of economic equilibrium explain development, or does change demand different concepts? In this 1908 review of John Bates Clark’s Essentials of Economic Theory, Joseph A. Schumpeter makes that boundary the test of a sympathetic but exacting appraisal. He credits Clark with bringing scattered inquiries into economic dynamics into a coherent framework, yet identifies a missing force: active striving to advance, which might generate development even without changes in Clark’s specified conditions. His reservations extend to interest, which he argues cannot be satisfactorily explained within statics, and to the passage from analysis into policy advocacy against trusts. The review offers a compact encounter with Schumpeter’s developing conception of economic change, while showing precisely where his admiration for Clark gives way to methodological disagreement.

Massachusetts could regulate its own business corporations, but what happened when local enterprises obtained their charters in more permissive states? This tension anchors William E. Rappard’s 1908 dissertation, which joins economic history to comparative law to explain the turn toward liberal incorporation rules in 1903. Rappard distinguishes the industrial forces driving corporate growth from the legal arrangements governing access to capital and the distribution of risk. His comparisons with European regimes sharpen a practical question: how can investors and creditors protect themselves when administrative approval offers no guarantee of reliable information? Supporting corporate enterprise without treating its interests as paramount, he emphasizes truthful, accessible disclosure and penalties for deception. The study shows how competition among charter-granting states could undermine safeguards that any one state sought to maintain.

What does a definition of capital leave out when it makes the enterprise its organising unit? In this 1908 review of Walther Jacoby, Robert Zuckerkandl turns a methodological disagreement into concrete tests of classification. Jacoby reserves capital for a category grounded in legal and social relations; Zuckerkandl argues that economic categories independent of legal arrangements can still help explain social life. Theatres, passenger transport, medical establishments, and productive assets outside enterprises expose boundaries that Jacoby’s account has not adequately explained. Praising the book’s clarity without accepting its proposed solution, Zuckerkandl shows why the dispute is more than terminological: the definition adopted determines which productive activities and assets an account of capital can recognise.

No economy is governed by interest alone: conduct is formed by moral sentiment, custom, and law, each carrying its own sanction, conscience, public opinion, state force, and its own historical rhythm. Drawing on Schaeffle, Wundt, Westermarck, and Schmoller, Schwiedland traces how inward feeling hardens into Sitte, the socially expected form of conduct, and how custom in turn sustains, softens, or defeats written law even after its repeal. The deeper ground of both is collective self-protection, which is why acts condemned as selfish between individuals may be praised when done for the state. Applied historically, the argument shows guild rules and price ordinances confining commerce until the eighteenth century, liberal freedom then loosening them, and the modern state re-entering through factory protection, wage regulation, and social insurance to subordinate economic voluntarism to the community's sense of the fair.

„Sitte ist stärker als Recht“.

English translation: “Custom is stronger than law.”

A lower building tax need not mean a lower rent. In this 1908 pamphlet, published under the signature Dr. M. Dub and attributed to Moriz Dub, Austria’s proposed reform is tested against the incentives facing owners, builders, and tenants. Dub supports relief but distinguishes a guaranteed saving that can raise a property’s selling price from a contingent promise that may merely encourage its owner to hold on. His calculations show why six years of complete exemption can outweigh twelve years of partial relief, while his attention to municipal surcharges exposes how local revenue needs may erode state concessions. For tenants, he argues, the crucial test is whether relief produces enough additional housing to restrain rent increases—not whether landlords receive a nominal tax cut.

Who should support an unemployed worker—and what work must that worker accept in return? In this 1908 policy article, Emil Perels approaches Austrian unemployment protection through European experiments and the German Imperial Statistical Office’s comparative evidence. His concern is practical: rules about culpable dismissal, acceptable wages, and occupational risk determine whether assistance prevents destitution or excludes those who need it. He provisionally favours the Ghent system of public subsidies to trade-union benefits, while confronting its central weakness: occupational solidarity helps administer support but leaves unorganized workers exposed. Perels’s comparisons show why a failed municipal fund does not settle the case against compulsory insurance, and why successful voluntary provision does not establish adequate coverage. The article exposes the judgments about responsibility and solidarity embedded in apparently technical insurance rules.

Interest on productive capital still lacked a settled explanation, and this 1908 study sets out to supply one. Working from subjective value theory in the lineage of Menger and Böhm-Bawerk, yet breaking with the latter's agio theory, Engländer traces it to a structure illustrated by a fisherman and his net: the economic efficiency (Wirtschaftlichkeit) of a produced means, the divergent valuations of its maker and its user under the division of labor, and the self-interest that lets each keep part of the surplus through bargaining. He rejects positive imputation as neither practiced nor needed, denies that competition and the 'cost law' abolish profit, and treats the price difference between means and product not as the cause but as the visible sign of capital's productivity.

Denn, um es nochmals zu betonen, jeder Tausch muß für den Tauschenden von Vorteil sein, seine wirtschaftliche Lage muß hierdurch nach seiner Ansicht gebessert werden, weil er sonst den Tausch mangels eines Motives nicht eingehen würde.

English translation: “For, to emphasize it once more, every exchange must be advantageous to the one exchanging; his economic situation must, in his view, be improved thereby, because otherwise, lacking a motive, he would not enter into the exchange.”

Mathematics may clarify an economic law without providing a reliable method for discovering it: this distinction sharpens Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1909 review of Adolphe Landry’s Manuel d’économique. Welcoming the textbook’s breadth and combination of theory with factual material, Schullern nevertheless tests its definitions, methods, and social priorities. He values its attention to the gap between homo oeconomicus and people shaped by family commitments, imperfect foresight, and inconsistent attitudes toward risk. His reservations also reach beyond technique: he wants a firmer account of legislation’s responsibilities toward economic and social relations. This brief review offers a concrete encounter with his standards for economic education—conceptual precision and methodological openness, joined to concern for the purposes economic knowledge should serve.

Did nineteenth-century public finance create a new theory, or refine ideas already developed in the eighteenth? In this brief 1909 review, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen endorses Carlo Torlonia’s study of Forbonnais as evidence for continuity. His notice singles out taxation’s economic effects, public debt and the distribution of tax burdens as subjects of that earlier theoretical inquiry. Schullern’s praise also sets a revealing limit: he judges Torlonia’s treatment comprehensive insofar as Forbonnais’s doctrines still command contemporary interest. The review offers a concise example of a financial scholar assessing historical scholarship by both its care and the continuing relevance of its subject.

Restoring Adam Smith’s standing need not mean declaring his theory beyond criticism. In this brief 1909 review of Emilio Cossa’s study, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen welcomes the painstaking scholarship while resisting its unconditional defence of Smith’s theory of value. His reservation centres on a concrete distinction: the supposedly invariant labour required by a kind of commodity versus the labour actually embodied in an individual unit. The review offers a compact encounter with a sympathetic but discriminating reader of classical economics. Schullern’s closing plea is not for Smith’s infallibility, but for judging his arguments through careful reading rather than through doctrines associated with his successors.

Mercantilist habits of thought persist, Schullern observes, even among readers unwilling to judge mercantilism fairly. His brief review of Emilio Cossa’s study welcomes an explanation of precious-metal accumulation not as wealth hoarding for its own sake, but as a response to the monetary needs of expanding exchange. In Cossa’s account, policies later condemned by economists become intelligible within the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Schullern’s interest lies in this recovery of historical rationale, yet his approval stops short of accepting every defence: Cossa’s enthusiasm, he suggests, occasionally overshoots its mark. The review offers a compact instance of the distinction between explaining why an economic policy made sense in its circumstances and endorsing its claims without reservation.

A tax on rising urban land values may have a coherent fiscal rationale yet leave its social consequences unsettled. In this 1909 review of Fabrizio Natoli’s study, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen makes that distinction decisive: could the levy itself raise building-site prices and produce social harm? He credits Natoli’s systematic treatment but finds this question left unanswered. His reservations also concern taxable capacity: against Natoli’s general emphasis on wealth, Schullern argues that income ordinarily provides the relevant measure, while accepting a marginal-utility account of tax sacrifice. This brief review offers a precise encounter between fiscal reasoning and social-policy scrutiny, showing why a justification for collecting a tax does not by itself establish the desirability of its effects.