3,673 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
New documents can unsettle an intellectual biography without yet supplying a better one. In this 1938 review of William Robert Scott’s Adam Smith as Student and Professor, Hayek welcomes evidence that clarifies Smith’s economic thinking before his journey to France and challenges received assumptions about physiocratic influence. Yet archival abundance is not enough: poor cross-references, hard-to-read facsimiles and missing bibliographical guidance leave readers to perform too much of the historian’s work. Hayek’s distinctive concern is the distance between establishing evidence and explaining what it changes. This short review shows him weighing discoveries about Smith against the scholarly presentation needed to make their implications intelligible—and asking for a rewritten biography rather than merely an enlarged documentary record.
Logical symbolism can repel nonmathematicians through reverential awe as readily as through aversion. In this brief 1938 newspaper review, Felix Kaufmann praises the German translation of Alfred Tarski’s introduction for addressing that obstacle without demanding advanced mathematics. His judgement rests on concrete teaching choices: minimal symbolism, secondary-school prerequisites, and exercises that let readers test their understanding. The review offers a compact account of what Kaufmann values in an introduction to logic—not merely ease of exposition, but preparation for harder study and clearer reflection on research methods. His particular recommendation to researchers and students concerned with the methodology of their own disciplines connects an elementary textbook with questions beyond mathematics.
Economics supplies mathematics with problems, not merely a field for applying established tools: this is the distinctive emphasis of Gerhard Tintner’s 1938 review of R. G. D. Allen’s Mathematical Analysis for Economists. Tintner asks whether mathematics’ close historical association with physics and astronomy has narrowed its attention. Industrial location, monopoly pricing and saving offer concrete alternatives, linking economic questions to geometry, optimization and the calculus of variations. His praise of Allen thus becomes a case for changing what mathematicians study and teachers use as examples. This short review lets readers examine a reciprocal view of mathematical economics: economists acquire analytical methods, while mathematicians encounter problems that may broaden their subject’s customary priorities.
Would it not be interesting for any mathematician to supplement the well known and worn out examples from physics by some economic applications?
Economic regulation can defeat its own purposes when administrative resolve substitutes for understanding. In this brief review of Walter Eucken’s Nationalökonomie—wozu?, Emil Lederer locates the defense of economic theory in a concrete political setting: German economic control under the shadow of total war, with its faith in willpower and organization. He presents Eucken’s demand that planning respect economic logic, while stressing that theoretical guidance must be tested against actual conditions. Lederer’s distinctive observation is that the book addresses those wielding economic power more than rival academic schools. The review offers a compact account of why theory matters precisely to those who intend to intervene.
Assurances that economic planning can coexist with freedom are not explanations of how it would do so. This distinction drives Hayek’s short 1938 review of Findlay Mackenzie’s symposium, whose informative discussions of particular policies he distinguishes from its weaker treatment of comprehensive planning. His criticism draws on tensions within the volume itself: contributors repeatedly address liberty and democracy, while the editor concedes that war could disrupt a planned society more severely than one allowing continuous private adjustment. Hayek turns that concession against the argument for extending planning in preparation for defence. The review offers a compact encounter with his critical method: acknowledging useful scholarship while testing whether advocates have answered the institutional difficulties their own discussions expose.
Government price fixing poses different problems depending on who competes with whom. In this brief review of Arnold Horwitz’s doctoral thesis, Gerhard Tintner values precisely that comparative approach: minimum prices, maximum prices, and direct price fixation examined across competitive and monopolistic markets. He places Horwitz’s analysis at the intersection of Mises’s work on price regulation and Stackelberg’s account of market organization, while noting its engagement with English and American scholarship. Tintner’s praise also marks a boundary: imperfect competition, selling costs, and price discrimination remain subjects for further investigation. The review offers a compact critical appraisal of what a differentiated theory of price controls should address, rather than an account of the effects of particular controls.
Fewer corporate groups need not make consolidated accounts a less pressing question. That distinction anchors Helene Lieser’s brief 1938 review of Artur Wisswedel’s Konzern und Konzernsteuerrecht. She welcomes its compact, orderly treatment of consolidated balance sheets despite what she describes as a tendency toward reduced group formation or dissolution. Her notice records a precise evaluative priority—clarity on a still-current accounting question—rather than assessing Wisswedel’s specific legal arguments.
What makes a legal treatise useful to readers abroad? In this brief review of Guido Bortolotto’s Diritto del lavoro, Helene Lieser singles out the connection between coherent exposition and accessible legal sources. She notes its precise scope—private employment-contract law, with public labour law reserved for a separate volume—and approves its combination of references to statutes and decisions with reproduced legislation and collective agreements. Rather than debating particular doctrines, Lieser offers a compact assessment of how the book equips its readers, grounding her recommendation to foreign readers in its organization and documentary support.
How should banking scholarship explain liquidity regulation without concealing its difficulties or overstating its dangers? In this brief review of Helmut Burchard’s study of German and Swiss banking law, Helene Lieser praises precisely that balance. Her concern is the quality of exposition rather than the merits of individual legal provisions: clear organization, measured judgment, and historical, statistical and bibliographical support that does not overwhelm the discussion. The review offers a concise glimpse of her standards for scholarship intended to make recent banking legislation intelligible beyond a narrow specialist readership.
What makes a statistical reference usable beyond its country of origin? In this brief 1938 review of Tabellen en Grafieken betreffende de Nederlandsche Conjunctuur, Helene Lieser singles out English labelling alongside tabulated business-cycle data and free semiannual updates. Her notice offers a practical appraisal of accessibility and maintenance, rather than a methodological critique: readers discover how this Dutch publication helped users unfamiliar with the language find their way through economic statistics and keep them current.
For Fritz Machlup, brevity in an economics textbook need not mean theoretical impoverishment. His 1938 review of Richard von Strigl’s Einführung in die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie contrasts the flood of American elementary textbooks with German-language introductions weighed down by bibliographies and footnotes. Strigl offers a different teaching model: supply and demand by page two, and a compact treatment linking roundabout production to wage-fund and marginal-productivity theories. Machlup’s praise makes clear what he values in introductory instruction—rapid access to analytical tools rather than scholarly apparatus. His notice of Strigl’s politically delicate discussion of the “common good,” including its use to justify protection and subsidies for particular groups, also shows how he connects accessible economic teaching with scrutiny of policy claims.
Kerschagl's 1938 inaugural lecture surveys Austria's contribution to modern economics as both doctrinal history and methodological self-portrait, and its verdict is pointed: scientific economics on Austrian soil begins not with cameralism or mercantilism but with the marginal-utility school. Menger supplies the foundations of subjective value and imputation; Böhm-Bawerk extends them into capital, interest, and taxation; Wieser gives the theory a broader social cast—before Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter, Morgenstern, and Haberler enlarge the field. What unites them, he argues, is not uniform doctrine but an elastic analytical core, and he plays down the Methodenstreit with the German historical school as an exaggerated quarrel. Universalist organic economics, associated with Spann, earns cautious respect: valuable for recalling economists to society, but unable to replace causal explanation with metaphysical totality.
Die Ökonomie kann daher auch selbstverständlich keine größere Sicherheit bieten, als eben die beschränkte der Erfahrung selbst.
English translation: “Economics can therefore of course offer no greater certainty than the limited certainty of experience itself.”