The archive.

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.

Later revisions do not necessarily make an earlier exposition obsolete. In this brief 1932 review, Hayek welcomes the London School of Economics reprint of Böhm-Bawerk’s Grundzüge for restoring detailed discussions omitted from later presentations of his value theory. He credits Böhm-Bawerk not simply with restating Menger and Wieser, but with sharpening their arguments and resolving difficulties while preparing the foundations for his theory of capital and interest. The review offers a compact view of Hayek’s judgement of the Austrian tradition: clarity of exposition can itself advance theory, and an early text may retain analytical value even where its author subsequently changed his position.

Austria’s new personal income tax met government forecasts yet yielded strikingly less than its Prussian counterpart. In this brief review, Carl Menger assesses Friedrich von Wieser’s attempt to explain the gap without treating aggregate receipts as self-evident measures of wealth, administrative competence or tax morale. Menger welcomes Wieser’s effort to account for differences between the taxes, but presses two concrete reservations: the burden of yield taxes operating alongside income tax, and the need to compare the systems at similar stages of implementation. His qualified endorsement offers a compact example of his standards for fiscal comparison: before drawing conclusions about taxpayers, examine the institutions and assessment periods that produced the figures.

When the state reserves an industry to itself, are its earnings simply another tax? This distinction anchors Carl Menger’s review of Otto Gerlach’s revision of the fifth edition of Wilhelm Roscher’s System der Finanzwissenschaft. Menger welcomes the edition’s greater practical usefulness but challenges Gerlach’s classification of state monopoly receipts as indirect taxes. Excluding private enterprise, he argues, secures returns for the state through a mechanism distinct from taxation—even when a monopoly also facilitates tax surcharges. His qualified defence of Roscher makes this more than an assessment of editorial improvements: the review shows why the source of public income matters, and how apparently tidy fiscal categories can obscure the economic arrangements that generate it.

Must wartime price increases be reversed before foreign trade can recover? In this review of Robert Liefmann’s study of monetary expansion, Alfred Amonn challenges that prescription by distinguishing exchange-rate stability from restoration of a lower price level. He accepts that new money raises prices through incomes and demand, but disputes Liefmann’s claim to have discovered this mechanism. His sharper objection concerns causation: he treats rising domestic prices and currency depreciation as parallel effects of monetary expansion, rather than the former as the cause of the latter. The review offers a compact encounter with economic criticism in practice, showing why higher import prices measured in marks do not, in Amonn’s argument, necessarily mean paying more in goods or labor.

A common customs frontier does not imply a common economic interest. In this 1902 article, Eugen von Philippovich examines tariff negotiations in a monarchy whose economic unity depends on a renewable agreement between Austria and Hungary. His revealing example is grain protection: Hungary’s agricultural exporters can benefit from import duties because the shared customs territory has become a net grain importer, leaving Austrian consumers to bear higher food costs. By tracing such conflicts through constitutional procedures and organised pressure on bureaucracies, Philippovich shows why tariff policy cannot be read simply from parliamentary decisions. Germany’s proposed tariff adds an external constraint, encouraging even export interests to support retaliatory bargaining measures. The article offers a concrete account of how internal distributional struggles can turn hopes of commercial cooperation into competitive protectionism.

Böhm-Bawerk’s fiscal career becomes a defence of abstract economics in this dictionary entry by his lifelong friend and fellow Austrian economist Friedrich von Wieser. Wieser credits his colleague’s scientific training with the clarity needed to reform taxation, strengthen state credit and manage public finances—directly answering critics who regarded Austrian theory as remote from practical life. The appreciative portrait also makes room for disagreement: Wieser explains Böhm-Bawerk’s account of interest through the lower valuation of distant needs, while acknowledging its divided reception. This compact assessment shows how an intellectual ally connects theoretical precision with administrative judgment, yet distinguishes the value of Böhm-Bawerk’s research from acceptance of his central explanation of interest.