2,793 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
What does Menger value in another economist’s teaching? This brief 1898 review of the first two parts of Johannes Conrad’s Grundriss offers a concrete answer: impartial consideration of economic problems, attention to current practical questions, and the use of recent statistics. Menger finds more than a useful lecture outline here; he sees Conrad’s method and scholarly temperament at work, especially in agricultural policy, where he singles out Conrad’s research. The interest lies less in any theoretical dispute than in Menger’s criteria of praise—a compact glimpse of what he commends in economics addressed to students, fellow teachers, and readers beyond the university.
Surveying the theoretical economics of his decade, Böhm-Bawerk turns a set of book reviews, of Marshall, Dietzel, Stolzmann, Taussig, Wicksell, and others, into an Austrian program in disguise. Marshall's Principles earns admiration as the age's fullest synthesis, yet its blending of cost and utility, abstinence and roundabout production, remains too conciliatory to explain why interest arises at all. Dietzel draws the most sustained fire: once he defines costs through the utilities sacrificed by employing productive means elsewhere, no essential difference survives between his cost theory and marginal-value theory. Stolzmann's appeal to class power and coercion in distribution is taken seriously but judged an overcorrection, since social force cannot displace economic causation wholesale. Throughout, the essay refuses to let any single element, whether labor, cost, power, or productivity, become an all-sufficient cause, and defends the future of value theory against Gottl's skepticism.
Ich glaube nicht, dass Stolzmann für seine positive Theorie von den Arbeiter- und Capitalisten-Nahrungseinheiten viele Proselyten machen wird.
English translation: “I do not think that Stolzmann will make many proselytes for his positive theory of the workers' and capitalists' subsistence units.”
Can agricultural protection best serve farmers by taking other occupations’ interests into account? In this brief 1899 review of the second edition of Adolf Buchenberger’s Grundzüge der deutschen Agrarpolitik, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen endorses precisely that position. He singles out the expanded discussions of protective tariffs and grain futures trading for their objectivity and freedom from slogans, rather than rehearsing their proposals. The review offers a compact statement of Schullern’s criterion for sound agrarian policy: lasting agricultural benefit should be compatible with broader social and economic aims. His praise sharpens into a warning against sectional demands and preconceived doctrines that can pass from daily political conflict into legislation.
A promise to reconcile private property with society’s rights meets a reviewer unwilling to mistake ambition for achievement. In this 1899 review of Alessandro Garelli’s La proprietà sociale, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen acknowledges independent thinking while questioning the proposed synthesis of rival economic schools. His skepticism takes concrete form in a query about Austrian income taxation: does Garelli’s example refer to a tax already abolished? Yet Schullern’s objection is not simply doctrinal. He argues that excessive length and terminology obscure ideas potentially useful to public finance. This brief, pointed review shows how he separates intellectual promise from effective exposition, without claiming to have refuted the system as a whole.
An international collection of labour laws gives Schullern occasion to judge both documentary practice and Austrian legislative inertia. In this brief 1899 review of the Belgian Labour Office’s first Annuaire, covering 1897, he welcomes French translations of legal texts accompanied by accounts of parliamentary debates and preparatory inquiries. Yet he defends selective coverage of regulations: completeness would add bulk without equivalent value for readers abroad. Austria’s sparse representation prompts a sharper judgement, which he attributes to stagnation in its social and economic legislation. The review offers a compact example of how a practical reference work could serve both the need to follow foreign worker-protection measures and criticism of policy at home.
Does public borrowing burden future generations, or does that question obscure what the state does with the funds? In this brief 1899 review of Antonio De Viti de Marco’s Saggi di economia e finanza, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the essay on public loans for its theoretical precision. He reports De Viti de Marco’s contention that borrowing is less burdensome than extraordinary taxation and does not make later generations contribute, then highlights its connection to the productivity of public expenditure and value through time. Schullern offers endorsement rather than sustained criticism. His selective account shows why the borrowing essay, rather than the collection’s studies of mercantilism and state property, commanded his attention.
Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief review turns a study of Italian associations before the commune into an argument about national persistence. Reading Arrigo Solmi’s research through the contrast between Gothic accommodation and Lombard resistance to Roman institutions, Schullern treats nations as enduring forces shaping law and social organization. He explicitly acknowledges that Solmi did not set out to demonstrate this claim. That gap between the book’s purpose and the reviewer’s interpretation is the review’s distinctive interest: it shows how praise for detailed source scholarship can serve a national-organic account of institutional change. Schullern’s reservation about Solmi’s apparent lack of unpublished archival evidence also qualifies his endorsement of the book as a guide to research on communal origins.
Impartial judgment of the stock exchange need not mean withholding moral criticism. In this brief 1899 review of Camillo Supino’s La borsa e il capitale improduttivo, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen welcomes a distinction between capital that serves production and capital whose gains, in Supino’s account, come at the expense of public prosperity. His précis identifies a concrete analytical hinge: credit instruments make present or future goods transferable but are not themselves those goods. Schullern’s endorsement reveals what he wants from economic criticism—not blanket praise or condemnation of the exchange, but an account of its useful mechanisms capable of identifying and censuring harmful activity.
When wages cannot support a family and insure it against misfortune, what responsibility falls to the state? In this short 1899 review of Carlo Francesco Ferraris’s report on workplace accidents and legislation, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen sets aside legislative detail to examine the case for compulsory workers’ insurance. He endorses Ferraris’s argument that inadequate earnings and unreliable private provision require public intervention without a radical reconstruction of the economy. His approval is pointed: he welcomes both Ferraris’s refusal to blame employers alone and his selective adaptation of foreign legislation to Italian conditions. The review offers a compact statement of Schullern’s reformist commitments, showing where he locates a defensible alternative to economic liberalism and socialist doctrine.
Agricultural progress and economic distress coexist in Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1899 review of Eduard von der Hellen’s lecture on Italy’s economy. Endorsing Hellen’s broad diagnosis, Schullern nevertheless questions what declining harvests prove: restrictions on rice cultivation may protect public health, while vine disease can depress wine yields. His praise for northern Italy’s private agricultural initiative sharpens his attack on taxation and administration that, he argues, squander its gains. The review’s revealing tension lies in the remedy: confidence in productive initiative accompanies an explicitly authoritarian demand for strong central government, even empowered to expropriate large landowners. This short intervention shows how discriminating attention to agricultural evidence can coexist with sweeping political judgments about parliamentary government and Italy’s relations with France.
Profit-sharing may be defensible in economic theory without being workable in every enterprise. That distinction anchors Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s 1899 review of Émile Waxweiler’s study of remuneration. Schullern welcomes Waxweiler’s challenge to theoretical objections but values his refusal to turn reported gains in productivity and workers’ income into a universal prescription. His attention to the examination of business accounts gives the assessment a concrete administrative focus: sharing profits also requires arrangements for establishing what those profits are. Although he faults Waxweiler for omitting recent evidence, Schullern endorses his conditional conclusions. This brief review shows precisely where a sympathetic critic places the limits of a contested wage reform.
Consumption can express the outcome of economic activity without being the foundation from which all economics must be derived. This distinction anchors Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s brief 1899 review of Emilio Cossa’s Del consumo delle ricchezze. Schullern welcomes Cossa’s attention to a neglected subject, singling out the relation between available goods and the relative importance of needs, and the argument that needs are satisfied in culturally shaped combinations rather than one after another. His endorsement rests on clarity and the identification of questions deserving further inquiry, not on a detailed defence of every proposition he reports. The review offers a compact account of why consumption merits analysis alongside production—and why its patterns cannot be reduced to isolated acts of using goods.