The archive.

Austria-Hungary maintained gold payments without legally obliging its central bank to redeem notes. In this 1909 article, republished here in 2012, Ludwig von Mises asks what that gap between law and practice actually allowed the Bank to do. Its holdings of foreign bills earned interest and economized on bullion, but did they also permit lower interest rates and independence from international money markets? Mises argues that they did not: foreign-exchange management reorganized gold payments rather than escaping their constraints. His concrete account of bill purchases, gold exports, and discount-rate decisions distinguishes an economical reserve technique from monetary autonomy. The case for compulsory redemption consequently turns less on changing banking operations than on making an existing commitment credible to foreign creditors.

High prices can encourage new investment long after enough productive capacity is already under construction: this is the mechanism Emil Lederer examines in his short review of Albert Aftalion’s account of general overproduction. He credits Aftalion with clarifying how lengthy production processes delay the appearance of excess supply, turning apparent scarcity into a stimulus for crisis. Yet Lederer’s approval has a concrete limit: an explanation that assumes free competition leaves the effects of cartel formation unexamined. The review brings into focus the gap between a persuasive account of industrial timing and a theory adequate to the actual organization of markets.

Damaging allegations are not yet a political argument. In this brief 1910 review of Fritz Stephan Neumann’s Die Sozialdemokratie als Arbeitgeberin und Unternehmerin, Emil Lederer objects both to unverifiable citations and to the assumption that reported facts can substitute for a critique of Social Democracy’s principles. His sharper turn concerns persuasion: even an agitation pamphlet, exempt from scholarly expectations, defeats its purpose by underestimating its readers. Against fleeting electoral effects, Lederer sets the sustained influence he attributes to Lassalle and Bebel—writers read by German workers precisely for their intellectual substance, without free distribution by employers. The review offers a compact distinction between circulating hostility and making an argument that lasts.

Can coal output per worker measure a miner’s diligence? In this 1910 review of Ludwig Nieder’s study of the Saar mines, Emil Lederer endorses a concrete challenge to claims that higher wages, shorter shifts, and union activity reduced productivity. Stricter safety work could lower recorded output; reallocating workers between extraction and supporting tasks could change the average without any slackening of effort. Lederer singles out Nieder’s counterexamples, including mines with strong union membership where output rose rather than fell. His interest is not simply in defending workers, but in distinguishing their observed performance from the conditions that make it possible. This brief review shows how an apparently straightforward production statistic can become a misleading judgement about labour conduct.

Can socialism win intellectuals by promising freedom for their intellectual lives rather than appealing to economic interests alone? In this brief 1910 review of Max Adler’s pamphlet, Emil Lederer identifies both the persuasive force and the theoretical cost of that approach. Adler presents socialism as a cultural movement capable of liberating personality; Lederer observes that an appeal to educated readers’ ideals is not strictly historical-materialist. His judgement connects this tension to a concrete political audience: civil servants, whose movement he sees as already more oriented toward class struggle than it recognizes. The review offers a compact assessment of how socialist recruitment might draw strength from arguments that strain its theoretical commitments.

Political sympathy does not suspend economic criticism in Emil Lederer’s short review of Otto Bauer’s Die Teuerung. Praising Bauer’s explanation of rising prices for workers, Lederer singles out its concrete connections between Austrian conditions and the world economy. Yet he challenges the claim that gold-production costs determine gold’s value: gold’s legally secured conversion into money, he argues, distinguishes it from ordinary commodities, while higher mining wages might redistribute proceeds without altering world prices. This precise disagreement gives the review its interest: support for socialist education coexists with scrutiny of its monetary premises. Lederer’s closing observation—that Bauer’s practical proposals converge with Myrbach’s—also suggests why, in his judgement, consumer advocacy can support immediate socialist demands without requiring complete theoretical agreement.

Did Munich’s land-development companies profit by withholding building land, or depend on its rapid development? In this brief 1910 review of Reinhard Dönges’s study, Emil Lederer provisionally accepts the second view for Munich, where companies founded amid a population boom subsequently faced disappointing returns. His interest lies as much in the limits of the evidence as in its findings: dividend figures leave the composition of share capital unclear, while street-building obligations complicate the apparent gains from landownership. Lederer values Dönges’s documentary material without treating eight years of company activity as a final verdict. The review offers a compact example of how demographic change, development costs, and the observation period shape an assessment of the urban land question.

What holds together essays on subjects as varied as workers’ rights, trade treaties, and public finance? In this brief 1910 notice of the first volume of Adolf von Wenckstern’s Staatswissenschaftliche Probleme der Gegenwart, Joseph A. Schumpeter lets Wenckstern’s preface supply the answer: moderation in judgment and a search for common ground between divergent views. Schumpeter identifies the essays’ origins in lectures, addresses, and journal articles, but offers no verdict on their success. The notice provides a compact introduction to Wenckstern’s declared intellectual stance, while keeping that self-description distinct from critical endorsement.

Should savers’ wishes govern how banks invest entrusted money? In this brief 1910 review of Alfred Lansburgh’s three essays on banking policy, Joseph A. Schumpeter distinguishes concrete safeguards from the principle used to justify them. Lansburgh’s proposals include minimum holdings of government bonds, fuller balance-sheet disclosures and a supervisory office. Schumpeter expects some proposals to be adopted, but questions the seemingly persuasive demand that owners’ intentions determine investment. His concern is that this demand could become a slogan carrying intervention beyond Lansburgh’s own wishes. The review offers a compact instance of Schumpeter’s critical judgement: practical reforms and their governing rationale require separate scrutiny.

Does limited access to land and capital make their owners monopolists? In this 1910 review of Otto Conrad’s Lohn und Rente, Schumpeter challenges the economic explanation supporting Conrad’s condemnation of unearned income and proposals for reform. His objection turns on two distinctions: scarcity is not monopoly power, and a cost-saving innovation does not by itself explain a permanent return to capital. Schumpeter follows the competitive adjustments that Conrad’s account leaves unresolved—greater demand for capital, expanded production, and changing costs. The review offers a compact encounter with his exacting approach to distribution theory: an ethical objection to an income cannot substitute for an explanation of how it persists.

Vor allem ist beschränkte Konkurrenz und Monopol nicht dasselbe.

English translation: “Above all, restricted competition and monopoly are not the same thing.”

Money value is where personal valuation, market calculation, national income and historical institution meet — and this extended report refuses to treat it as a merely technical currency question. Wieser separates personal value, grounded in marginal utility, from the national-economic 'Geltung' a good holds through its price, then argues that money as money has exchange value only. The general price level is a composite determined from the side of goods and the side of money alike, so quantity theory errs in reading it as money's work alone; the faithful index of money value is the relation between money income and real income. Changes flow from paper issue, newly coined metal, and above all from monetization, as rents, taxes and state services enter monetary accounting. A closing report extends the theory to exchange rates and warns that index numbers cannot isolate money value from commodity values.

Das Aufblühen der Geldwirtschaft vermindert den Geldwert, ihr Verfall erhöht ihn wieder.

English translation: “The flourishing of the money economy diminishes the value of money; its decay raises the value of money once again.”

A patent, a labor service, and a customer relationship can all command a price—but what makes them objects of the same economic inquiry? In this 1910 article, Alfred Amonn argues that usefulness, scarcity, and material substance cannot adequately define the “good” required by price theory. His distinctive move is to shift attention from things and their properties to socially recognized powers of disposal: exchange transfers control, not simply physical objects. Rights, uncertain commercial advantages, and paid abstentions make the difference especially clear. Through his criticism of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and others, readers can discover why a seemingly preliminary dispute over terminology changes the object of economics itself—and why Amonn insists that its foundational concepts must follow its explanatory problems rather than ordinary language.