The archive.

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.

Divide economic life into two orders of fact, the repeated equilibrium of statics and the innovation of dynamics, and the central phenomena of capitalism fall into place. Reading Schumpeter's early system, Amonn shows that a purely static economy, where production and exchange merely reproduce themselves, forecloses every specifically capitalist income, interest, capital, and credit alike, since under full competition prices reduce to wages and rent. Everything else requires the entrepreneur, who breaks the routine by introducing a new combination and buys inputs at old prices while the transformed product commands a higher valuation. Profit is that temporary gap; interest is a share split from it; and crisis erupts when too many uncoordinated innovations obstruct one another's readjustment, collapsing the whole value-and-price system.

Gewinne können in der statischen Wirtschaft nicht entstehen.

English translation: “Profits cannot arise in a static economy.”

Can a historian of capitalism and a theorist of interest use the same concept of capital? In this 1915 rejoinder to Werner Sombart, Alfred Amonn argues that studying the same phenomena does not mean asking the same questions—or requiring identical concepts. Defending his book on the foundations of theoretical economics, he concedes the omission of Marx and Rodbertus while resisting Sombart’s broader indictment of Austrian scholarship. The reply becomes especially concrete when Amonn separates the unit in which prices are reckoned from the money used for payment: their customary association does not establish logical necessity. This compact controversy shows how Amonn distinguishes concepts needed to formulate economic problems from assumptions that may help solve them, giving methodological disagreement a sharper focus than allegiance to rival schools.

An economist need not found a school to shape a discipline. In this 1917 obituary, Alfred Amonn locates Eugen von Philippovich’s achievement in bringing Austrian theory, historical research, and practical social reform into relation. His tribute centres on a productive tension: reform should substantially improve workers’ lives without revolutionary rupture, while economic policy must remain sensitive to circumstances rather than promise universal remedies. Amonn connects these commitments to Philippovich’s textbook, teaching, and work on social insurance and labour protection. Yet admiration leaves room for criticism of the textbook and recognition of his limited political influence. The result is a revealing account of what Amonn valued in an economist: not doctrinal allegiance, but disciplined judgment, sympathy informed by analysis, and the ability to make rival intellectual traditions cooperate.

Must wartime price increases be reversed before foreign trade can recover? In this review of Robert Liefmann’s study of monetary expansion, Alfred Amonn challenges that prescription by distinguishing exchange-rate stability from restoration of a lower price level. He accepts that new money raises prices through incomes and demand, but disputes Liefmann’s claim to have discovered this mechanism. His sharper objection concerns causation: he treats rising domestic prices and currency depreciation as parallel effects of monetary expansion, rather than the former as the cause of the latter. The review offers a compact encounter with economic criticism in practice, showing why higher import prices measured in marks do not, in Amonn’s argument, necessarily mean paying more in goods or labor.

A currency can keep payments moving while shifting the cost of what it buys onto those compelled to accept it. In this 1918 article, Alfred Amonn examines that tension through the occupation lei issued in Romania against deposits at the Reichsbank. His distinction between financial backing and purchasing power explains why those deposits neither guaranteed redemption nor prevented inflation. The decisive question is who ultimately pays: under the peace settlement he describes, Romania would assume the note issue, freeing the occupiers’ deposits. Amonn judges the arrangement operationally successful while explicitly identifying its role in economic exploitation. His account lets readers trace how bank deposits, exchange rules and redemption obligations turned an instrument of everyday circulation into a means of transferring occupation costs.

Can a monetary theory justify reform if its central terms keep changing meaning? In this polemical review of Robert Liefmann’s Geld und Gold, Alfred Amonn tests claims of theoretical novelty against the discipline of consistent definition. He traces shifts between money as a tangible medium of exchange and money as an abstract accounting unit, arguing that these changes obscure rather than explain economic relations. The stakes become concrete in Liefmann’s proposal to dispose of the Reichsbank’s gold reserves. Without insisting that sound money must rest on gold, Amonn defends reserves as a resource for international purchases and postwar reconstruction. The review offers a pointed encounter between conceptual criticism and monetary policy: what must an economist establish before recommending that a country surrender such a resource?

Does overwhelming war debt expose the limits of taxation itself, or the failure of particular fiscal policies? In this 1919 review essay, Alfred Amonn examines Schumpeter’s answer with German-Austria’s prospects in view. He endorses a distinction with practical consequences: the war’s real losses have already occurred, while monetary claims still require adjustment. A one-time wealth levy intended to cancel debt is therefore not the same project as transferring productive property into state management. Amonn’s emphasis falls on the distance between economic possibility and political execution: reconstruction may be feasible, yet incompetent taxation can destroy the activity on which revenue depends. The essay also preserves a qualification in Schumpeter’s position—defending private enterprise for immediate recovery need not mean treating capitalism as a permanent social order.

Ranking satisfactions is not the same as measuring them. This distinction drives Alfred Amonn’s critique of the first volume of Robert Liefmann’s Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, which promises to rebuild economics on psychological foundations. Amonn tests that promise against definitions of utility and cost and numerical examples of choice: can subjective feelings legitimately be added, subtracted, or expressed as ratios? His defence of marginal-utility theory is qualified by a willingness to challenge its practitioners when they use the same questionable arithmetic. He also develops a concrete alternative to treating cost as pain: cost is the benefit forgone when resources are used elsewhere. The review offers a focused encounter with the limits of numerical representations of preference—and with the distinction between a genuinely new explanation and a change of theoretical vocabulary.

Transferring productive assets to “society” leaves a decisive question unanswered: who will actually direct production? In this 1919 article, Alfred Amonn tests socialization against the institutions needed to make it work, distinguishing state ownership, public shareholding, and autonomous administration with employee representation. His concern is not simply ownership but the preservation of entrepreneurial abilities, investment, and production during a transfer of authority. Germany’s dependence on foreign credit and markets adds a constraint that revolutionary political power cannot, he argues, remove. The article offers a concrete way to distinguish political authorization from economic feasibility—and to see why compensation, governing bodies, and reserves matter as much as declarations of collective ownership.

When does a change of terminology become a change of argument? In this polemical reply to Robert Liefmann, Alfred Amonn makes that distinction a test of economic reasoning. His sharpest example is money: he charges Liefmann with moving between an actual means of payment and an abstract accounting unit without distinguishing the two concepts. Amonn’s perspective is that of a critic who demands continuity of meaning across formulations, not conformity to a preferred vocabulary. His challenges to Liefmann’s claims of originality likewise turn on what predecessors actually wrote. The article offers a concrete encounter with the work of theoretical criticism: separating available resources from actual expenditure, checking quotations against interpretations, and asking whether a newly introduced distinction resolves a contradiction or merely conceals it.

Could the successor states of Austria-Hungary restore stable monetary relations without surrendering their newly acquired sovereignty? In this 1921 article, Alfred Amonn separates the case for predictable exchange rates from the demand for a single currency. His proposal is concrete: revive the old gold crown as a shared standard while allowing national currencies and names to remain distinct. Gold accounting, he argues, would also expose what nominal wage and dividend increases conceal about purchasing power. The article offers a revealing distinction between recovering an economic mechanism and restoring an imperial political order. Its editorial reservations sharpen the practical tension: Amonn’s gradual programme depends on fiscal restraint precisely where budget difficulties and renewed note issuance threaten to undermine it.