The archive.

Changing a currency means deciding what old promises are worth in new money. In this 1891 Prague lecture, Friedrich von Wieser supports Austria’s adoption of gold but locates the hardest problem in converting existing gulden obligations. Austria’s suspension of private silver coinage in 1879 had already separated the gulden’s monetary value from its metal content; conversion at bullion value would therefore devalue claims. Yet choosing an exchange rate raises a further conflict: protecting creditors at recent valuations may unsettle exporters whose businesses depend on longer-established rates. Wieser’s distinctive contribution is to separate contractual justice from economic continuity without dismissing either. His analysis shows why monetary reform requires more than selecting a metal: legislation must reconcile inherited obligations, international exchange, and the calculations on which production depends.

Weighing how to set Austria-Hungary's currency on a sound footing, Landesberger enters the monometallism-versus-bimetallism quarrel with a strategist's caution. Rather than commit doctrinally to pure gold, which he holds would force ruinous silver sales, deepen the long price depression running since the 1870s, and sharpen a global scramble for scarce gold, he urges a French-type limping standard, saturated with silver yet legally equal to gold, that keeps open the path to a future international bimetallic union. His distinction between gold agio and gold premium lets him defend the Bank of France's practice of shielding reserves through a premium rather than punitive discount hikes. A second essay recasts the 'Relation' as a legal problem: how to convert debts contracted in depreciated paper into gold justly, by averaged conversion periods instead of a single reform-date rate.

A buyer may lose both the goods and every instalment already paid—yet abolishing that forfeiture clause may do little to change the underlying imbalance. In this 1891 review of four studies of instalment selling, Victor Mataja tests legal remedies against sellers’ commercial incentives and buyers’ practical vulnerability. He distinguishes credit that equips small producers from credit that encourages imprudent consumption, and asks why formally available protections can fail when litigation is distant, claims are small, and dealers can devise new oppressive terms. His disagreements with the reviewed authors make this more than a survey: readers can discover why he favours adaptable supervision over isolated prohibitions, without treating every restriction on instalment trade as an economic loss.

Agreement on marginal utility does not settle how income should be taxed. That tension gives concrete force to Böhm-Bawerk’s 1891 review of Dutch, Italian, and German writings on value: economists can share a theoretical foundation yet derive different fiscal rules, especially when changes in utility cannot be measured securely. Writing as a defender of subjective value theory, he judges rival accounts by their capacity to explain economic relationships rather than refine definitions. His criticism is particularly pointed where supply and demand appear as quantities stripped of the intensity of buyers’ and sellers’ valuations. The review lets readers examine both the practical reach and the unresolved difficulties of marginal utility theory, while distinguishing Böhm-Bawerk’s own commitments from the varied positions he assesses.

Erudition does not guarantee objectivity: this distinction shapes Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief 1892 review of Adolf Jäger’s Die sociale Frage. Jäger reads biblical prophecy through imperial history and examines European social and monetary conditions from a strictly Protestant standpoint. Schullern credits his learning, ingenuity and perseverance while objecting to anti-Catholic polemic and the sacrifice of scholarly objectivity to theological premises. The review offers a compact example of critical discrimination: Schullern neither dismisses the historical detail nor endorses the framework, and finds ideas worth circulating in a work whose design and spirit, he fears, will obstruct its reception.

A statistical yearbook can count a nation’s resources without adequately describing how its people live. In this 1892 review of the Annuario statistico italiano 1889–90, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen judges Italian statistics by their capacity to connect economic measurement with material welfare. He praises Luigi Bodio’s leadership and the yearbook’s explanations of how figures were collected, but reserves judgment on factory-level wage averages even when comparisons with wheat prices illuminate purchasing power. His attention to temporary migration, pellagra mortality, and silk production as a source of rural cash income gives this short review its concrete interest: readers encounter an economist asking which categories and comparisons make social conditions intelligible—and where abundant data still leave questions unanswered.

When a coin changes in value between the signing of a contract and payment, what counts as settling the debt? In this brief 1892 review, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen commends Conigliani’s historical treatment of that legal problem. He highlights the competing claims of coins’ legal, intrinsic and current values, and reports Conigliani’s conclusion that modern monetary conditions warrant recognition only of legal valuation at the moment of payment. Schullern’s emphasis falls on the historical circumstances behind these doctrines: the review offers a compact glimpse of how he valued the history of economic thought as a means of clarifying conflicting claims over monetary obligations.

Does credit reduce the need for money, or enable transactions whose expansion demands still more cash? This tension anchors Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s favourable 1892 review of Carlo Francesco Ferraris’s Principii di scienza bancaria. Schullern singles out Ferraris’s argument that credit supplements insufficient circulating money rather than simply replacing it. His praise rests on a specific critical standard: precise definitions should clarify economic effects, not merely tidy terminology. Readers can see how that standard shapes his assessment of monetary requirements, consumption credit and price formation. His closing attention to the comparatively neglected writings of Arthur Jehan de Johannis also gives the review a purpose beyond recommendation: bringing Italian research on banking and agricultural credit to a German-reading scholarly audience.

Cheap editions can widen access to economic knowledge—but at what cost to the printed text? In this brief 1892 review of Emanuel Herrmann’s Miniaturbilder aus dem Gebiete der Wirtschaft, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen welcomes the inexpensive 1891 edition while regretting its many printing errors. His praise centres on Herrmann’s sharp observation and skill in miniature description, with particular approval for discussions of Thünen’s law, the correspondence card, and luxury. The notice offers a compact example of Schullern’s criteria for popular economic writing: precise observation and engaging exposition that carry knowledge beyond specialist readers.

Could shorter working hours serve employers as well as workers without overturning private property? In this brief 1892 review, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen examines Emilio Cossa’s argument that they could: spreading employment would turn unemployed workers into purchasers, strengthening domestic demand. Schullern places this defence of reduced hours and state intervention against the resistance he identifies among Italian scholars. His interest is tempered by a precise reservation: Cossa may be too optimistic about the development he anticipates. The review offers a compact encounter with an economic case for shorter hours—and with a sympathetic reviewer who stops short of accepting its confidence in the outcome.

A limit on children’s factory hours meant little if the officials enforcing it depended on factory owners. This gap between legislation and protection anchors Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s 1892 review of G. K. Anton’s history of Prussian factory legislation. Schwiedland values Anton’s careful documentation but questions his favourable judgement of the bureaucracy: administrative initiative coexisted with prolonged delay, sparse inspection, and local resistance. Particularly revealing is the official suspicion that release from factory work would expose children to idleness and moral disorder. Read as a critical assessment rather than a substitute for Anton’s book, the review shows how the same evidence can support different judgements of state action—and why statutory working hours alone cannot measure the achievement of labour protection.

Can scarcity be incorporated into a cost theory of value without unsettling its Ricardian foundations? In this 1892 review of Ghino Valenti’s La teoria del Valore, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen tests that proposal against the claims of subjective value and marginal utility. Valenti treats production costs and scarcity as forms of difficulty in acquiring goods, linking departures from cost-based exchange to unequal distribution. Schullern’s interest lies in the tension between this ambitious explanation and its restricted conception of value as exchange value. He credits Valenti’s concrete analyses, especially of land rent, while withholding assent to the underlying theory. The review shows how a disagreement over value’s definition reaches into judgements about competition, privilege, and the justice of economic rewards.