The archive.

A handsome reprint need not be the most useful one for scholars. In this brief 1936 review, Hayek welcomes the republication of W. A. Shaw’s collection of English monetary documents but questions the cost of its sumptuous production. His judgement distinguishes the bimetallic controversy that shaped Shaw’s 1896 selection from the documents’ continuing value—notably Newton’s reports as Master of the Mint, otherwise unavailable in print. The review offers a compact glimpse of Hayek as a reader of historical economic sources, attentive both to the interests governing their selection and to the practical conditions under which scholars can consult them.

A useful biography can still fail its subject as an economist. In this brief review of D. B. Copland’s two lectures on W. E. Hearn, Hayek welcomes new information about Hearn’s Australian career but finds his economic thought poorly served. Hayek values Hearn’s original observations and lucid expression; he wants them examined in relation to the teaching at Trinity College and their influence on later writers. His objection is pointed: Copland makes Hearn a vehicle for contemporary Australian economists’ views. The review offers a compact glimpse of Hayek’s judgement of Hearn—and of the distinction he draws between recovering a thinker’s contribution and recruiting him for present purposes.

For Gerhard Tintner, reliable confirmation can matter more than striking novelty. His 1936 review of Allen and Bowley’s Family Expenditure praises their use of household budgets to connect demand theory with statistical evidence, while questioning one simplifying assumption: a linear preference scale maintained throughout the investigation. Where that assumption appears to fail, he wants statistical tests, not merely a workable approximation. This brief review offers a concrete view of Tintner’s standards for econometric research: close knowledge of the data, explicit testing of theoretical assumptions, and economic interpretation of numerical results. His praise turns on what the calculations establish about household spending—not on mathematical sophistication alone.

A bibliography can gather elusive material yet still make it difficult to find. In this brief 1936 review, Helene Lieser assesses the Cologne University retail institute’s bibliography for 1883–1933 from the standpoint of scholars and practitioners trying to locate relevant literature. She welcomes its inclusion of trade and company publications unavailable through the book trade, but questions the absence of cross-references. Her praise remains qualified: spot checks establish usefulness, not completeness. The review offers a compact example of bibliographic judgment, distinguishing breadth of coverage from ease of consultation and identifying the practical gain at stake—less time spent preparing to research, more time for the research itself.

Mahr reopens the Austrian puzzle of productive interest by asking precisely what the 'time element' contributes to it. Accepting from Jevons and Böhm-Bawerk that capitalistic production is temporally extended and present factor payments oriented toward future revenues, he defends—against Schumpeter—the persistence of an interest rate in a static economy: statics inherits the rate that development established and finds no force to remove it. His sharpest correction targets Böhm-Bawerk's 'average period of production,' whose inclusion of a capital good's whole past history breeds infinite regress and makes an old mine lengthen a present process merely by age. Distinguishing production period from use period, Mahr rebuilds the concept as the technically necessary time embodied in the portion actually consumed, and denies that more capital must always lengthen production or lower returns.

Die Einbeziehung der Nutzungsperiode der Kapitalgüter in die Berechnung der durchschnittlichen Produktionsperiode scheint mir die hauptsächliche Quelle aller Widersprüche und Ungereimtheiten darzustellen, die diesem Begriff bisher anhafteten.

English translation: “The inclusion of the period of use of capital goods in the calculation of the average period of production seems to me to constitute the principal source of all the contradictions and inconsistencies that have hitherto attached to this concept.”

Austria's 1934 constitution, and the authoritarian turn behind it, mark for Voegelin not a sudden rupture but a late episode in a state that never quite became one. Total and authoritarian, he argues, are political symbols forged in struggle rather than scientific concepts, and he assembles their elements—Carl Schmitt's total state, economic Vermachtung, mass activation, the monopoly of propaganda, the education of a people by its elite—before turning to the specifically Austrian problem: an empire of many nations that produced no unified Staatsvolk to will the republic into being. Much of the book is a sustained critique of Kelsen's pure theory of law, whose reduction of the state to a system of coercive norms Voegelin reads as an administrative evasion of political substance, and as the very formalism that made the 1933–34 transition so hard to name.

Die Machtquelle bleibt anonym.

English translation: “The source of power remains anonymous.”

Similar borrowing techniques can serve very different state purposes. That distinction gives Helene Lieser’s brief 1936 review of Heinrich Stuebel’s study of Prussian state borrowing its historical edge: many loans financed the nationalization of private railways rather than budget deficits. Lieser values the book’s archival substance, particularly its reproduced syndicate agreements, without equating documentary abundance with successful history. Her praise rests equally on its integration of economic and political context and foreign comparisons. The review offers a concise appraisal of what specialists and nonspecialists can gain from Stuebel’s work, while drawing attention to the difference between how a state borrows and what it borrows for.

What makes a statistical handbook useful for tracking economic fluctuations? In this brief review of Ernst Wagemann’s Konjunkturstatistisches Handbuch 1936, Helene Lieser looks beyond the accumulation of figures to their selection, comparability and accessibility. Her approval is expressly limited to a first inspection, but her criteria are concrete: series should illuminate conditions across the economy and within individual industries, while a clear arrangement and subject index should make the evidence retrievable. The review offers a compact example of judging an economic reference work by what its users can actually do with it.

A gift given, a service rendered, a wrong avenged: beneath these Thurnwald finds one impulse toward counter-performance, and here he raises reciprocity into the organizing principle of social life. Association begins in the bio-psychical complementarity of the sexes and ages—marriage as durable mutual care, parent and child bound by deferred return, the living tied to ancestors through offerings. He rejects any primitive communism of products, reads barter, kula, and potlatch as personal repayment rather than impersonal purchase, and interprets Buin shell money as a memory-sign of obligation. Stratification bends reciprocity into clientage, feudalism, serfdom, and slavery—equilibria that turn unjust once valuations shift—while law, morality, and revenge appear as its formalized demands. Cultures decline, he warns, when this balance is lost.

Jede Leistung aus der „Spezialität“ des einen Partners soll zur Erwiderung beim anderen anregen.

English translation: “Every service arising from the "specialty" of one partner is meant to prompt a reciprocal response from the other.”

What makes a statutory handbook usable beyond its domestic readership? In this brief 1936 review, Helene Lieser singles out the practical aids in the eighth edition of the German Commercial Code, revised by Heinrich Höninger with an introduction by Max Hachenburg. Her endorsement rests on concrete features: amendments incorporated through January 1935, a compilation of amending laws, a clear introduction, and a detailed subject index. Rather than interpreting commercial law, the notice records Lieser’s criteria for a dependable reference work—and her attention to the foreign reader’s need to navigate it.

For Helene Lieser, the test of a legal reference work is practical: can banking professionals use it without mastering every intricacy of German tax law? Her brief 1936 review of Burghard Kessler’s annotated edition of the Capital Transactions Tax Act of 16 October 1934 singles out its clear commentary and time-saving index. Covering company, securities and stock-exchange turnover taxes, the edition serves foreign as well as domestic users. The review offers a compact example of Lieser’s attention to the accessibility of specialist legal knowledge, rather than an assessment of the taxes themselves.

For Helene Lieser, the value of Korek-Stark’s bibliography lies in the searching it saves—not only for librarians, but for anyone studying Central Europe. Her brief 1936 review identifies the practical merits of arranging literature from 1919–1934 by country and recurring subject categories. She also marks the first part’s limits: agriculture, trade policy, and efforts toward regional integration. This compact assessment offers a researcher’s view of a reference tool, welcoming its clarity while calling for a second part to cover the questions left outside its scope.