The archive.

What can an economist praise across the divisions of competing schools? In this 1890 review of the first installment of N. G. Pierson’s second textbook volume, Carl Menger values a combination of theoretical discrimination, practical knowledge, and openness to reform. His account centres on a tension in Pierson’s economics: self-interest is indispensable to economic activity but insufficient to secure public welfare. Free trade and increased production coexist with concern for workers and scrutiny of property’s productive contribution. Menger’s praise does not make every reported position his own; it shows what he admires in another economist’s practice. This brief review offers a concrete view of his critical standards—and of his effort to bring neglected Dutch scholarship to German-speaking readers.

A plausible premise does not guarantee a sound economic explanation. In this short 1890 review of Otto Effertz’s Arbeit und Boden, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk grants—with qualifications—that goods arise from labour and land, but challenges the deductions Effertz builds upon that claim. His qualified appreciation of Effertz’s observations on the “age” of labour and capital interest sharpens the distinction between fruitful insight and what he regards as Marx-inspired verbal dexterity. The review also exposes a concrete scholarly dispute: has Effertz actually read the “bourgeois economists” he dismisses? Böhm-Bawerk’s suspicion remains a suspicion, but it makes this compact polemic a pointed encounter with his standards for economic reasoning, fair criticism, and claims to originality.

Private fortunes can grow while productive resources deteriorate: Robert Meyer finds this tension central to Otto Wittelshöfer’s account of capital. His 1890 review credits Wittelshöfer’s attempt to connect socialist criticism with a theory of value grounded in needs, particularly where ownership transfers turn uncertain estimates into binding transactions. Yet Meyer separates an illuminating mechanism from an adequate explanation. If economic arrangements permit mistaken valuations, why do those mistakes periodically converge in collective optimism and crisis? This distinction gives the review its critical edge. Readers encounter a sympathetic but exacting assessment of how speculative gains, fixed monetary claims, and misdirected investment can detach private success from productive conditions—and where that account still leaves causation unexplained.

Does a salary cease to be income when it is saved, or a laborer’s wage when its recurrence is uncertain? In this short 1890 review of Robert Meyer’s Das Wesen des Einkommens, Böhm-Bawerk tests a proposed definition against precisely such cases. He welcomes Meyer’s exposure of contradictions in established accounts of income, yet argues that Meyer’s own emphasis on securely recurring consumption goods excludes earnings and benefits that an income theory must explain. Free accommodation and an equivalent rent allowance sharpen the discrepancy. The review offers a compact example of Böhm-Bawerk’s methodological judgement: better definitions require clearer accounts of economic relationships, not merely more ingenious wording. His criticism identifies where Meyer’s analysis is fruitful without accepting its proposed solution.

Concessions tucked into footnotes become evidence of a methodological retreat in Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy’s 1890 review of Franz Berghoff-Ising’s inaugural address on historical-ethical economics. Where Berghoff-Ising seeks accommodation between historical inquiry and abstract theory, Ludassy sees the historical school reluctantly acknowledging Austrian economics. His criticism also targets its social programme: protecting people of average capacities, he argues, need not protect the poorest and may instead entrench a domineering mediocrity. This short, partisan review offers a concrete instance of how methodological reconciliation can be read as an opponent’s surrender. Its particular interest lies in Ludassy’s attention to the distance between substantive concessions and their cautious presentation—a distance he locates in the address’s very arrangement of text and notes.

Can a theory of value explain both a lasting loss of productive capacity and the loss of a cigar consumed on a journey? In this 1890 review of Johann von Komorzynski’s Der Werth in der isolirten Wirthschaft, Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy separates a powerful criticism of marginal utility from an inadequate replacement theory. Komorzynski argues that temporary losses disrupt satisfactions differently from permanent reductions in supply. Ludassy takes that distinction seriously, but challenges a definition of value restricted to continuously effective useful powers: provisions, matches, and newspapers have value too. His concrete counterexample exposes the review’s central tension—how to account for continuity and replacement without excluding transient consumption—and shows why finding a weakness in a theory does not suffice to supersede it.

A balance of power can describe diplomatic alignments without fully explaining what drives them. In this brief 1890 review of Michele di Gisira’s study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treaties, Julius Landesberger distinguishes the pursuit of dynastic interests from the creation of international legal foundations. He praises Gisira’s concise historical account but identifies a concrete omission: Austrian hopes for the Spanish inheritance and their connection with religious politics. His reservation raises the possibility that Gisira’s explanatory standpoint itself limits what comes into view. The review offers a compact example of scholarly judgement that separates clarity of presentation from adequacy of explanation, asking what a mechanical balance among ruling houses leaves out.

What does it mean for a good to “contain” labour and land—and can equations clarify that claim before its terms are defined? In this 1890 review of Otto Effertz’s Arbeit und Boden, Gustav Gross welcomes the attempt to restore land to an economic analysis centred on labour, while challenging the foundations of Effertz’s system. His criticism tests the theory on its own terms: uncertain categories, he argues, cannot support precise deductions about population, wages or socialist distribution. Gross also questions the stark division between bourgeois and socialist society, pointing to collective organization within the former and the continuing place of private activity within the latter. This compact review offers a concrete encounter with the limits of economic abstraction: where mathematical form promises explanation, Gross asks whether the concepts and evidence justify it.

Market prices emerge from individual judgments, yet cannot directly measure any one person’s valuation. This tension animates Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy’s favorable 1890 review of Robert Zuckerkandl’s study of price theory. Ludassy values the book’s combination of doctrinal history and theoretical explanation: criticism of unrealistic economic assumptions need not mean abandoning deduction for description alone. His account brings subjective value theory into contact with imperfect knowledge, unequal incomes, and the difficulty of assigning an output’s value to jointly necessary productive inputs. The review offers a sympathetic but qualified presentation of this approach, showing why an explanation grounded in needs and choices must still reckon with purchasing power and the concrete circumstances of exchange.

Can mathematical price theory remain faithful to the complexity of economic conduct? In this 1890 review of Rudolf Auspitz and Richard Lieben’s Untersuchungen über die Theorie des Preises, Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy argues emphatically that it can. Restricting the mathematics and dispensing with diagrams, he explains how their abstract assumptions connect marginal choices to prices—and how those assumptions can be modified to approach actual conditions. His account is especially revealing where utility depends on a consumer’s provision with other goods, or where a price change prompts a sudden leap between consumption arrangements rather than gradual adjustment. This is an appreciative exposition, not a searching critique: its interest lies in the concrete grounds on which Ludassy finds formal precision compatible with attention to individual circumstances.

Economic theory can become dogma—but does exposing its limits justify abandoning it? In this 1890 newspaper review of Maurice Block’s two-volume survey, Carl Menger praises an alternative to both French attachment to classical doctrine and what he calls the “theoretical nihilism” of newer German historical economists. His distinction is precise: archives, inquiries, and institutional descriptions contribute to economic knowledge, but cannot replace explanation of the connections among economic phenomena. Menger values Block’s international scholarship as a means of revising inherited theory without discarding its defensible insights. The review offers a compact view of Menger’s standards for scientific progress: neither loyalty to Smith nor methodological novelty suffices; criticism must make theoretical reconstruction possible.

A fine that costs one offender a luxury may cost another food or warmth. In this 1890 article, Ernst Seidler von Feuchtenegg brings Carl Menger’s theory of subjective value to a problem of penal justice: how can equal culpability receive comparable punishment when money has unequal significance? He defends fines against abolition but argues that neither fixed sums nor uniform percentages of income secure equal sacrifice. Progressive assessment must account for dependants, health, and the difference between earnings and property income. The article’s distinctive tension lies between this individualized standard and what courts can actually learn from imperfect tax records. It shows why adjusting a fine to poverty need not mean forgiving an offence: it may instead be necessary to make punishment equally burdensome.