3,801 works, 471 books, 3,267 articles, 60 other works, 3 awaiting classification, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
Can an analysis of public ownership remain useful when its market assumptions are disputed? In this brief review of Walter Hamm’s Kollektiveigentum, Hans Bayer separates analytical merit from agreement with policy conclusions. He singles out Hamm’s distinction between price and competition, investment, and power and social policy objectives—a useful way to specify what public enterprises are meant to achieve. Yet Bayer locates Hamm’s critique in assumptions about functioning price competition and the possibility of controlling concentrations of power. The review offers a compact example of qualified appraisal: Bayer values the study’s questions and distinctions while making clear why readers who reject its neoliberal premises may also reject its conclusions.
A public enterprise’s losses may record a policy decision rather than a commercial failure. In this 1964 review of Wilhelm Weber’s edited volume Gemeinwirtschaft in Westeuropa, Hans Bayer gives particular attention to E. F. Schumacher’s account of Britain’s National Coal Board: low coal prices, costly imports, and employment protection complicate any judgement based on profitability alone. Bayer’s sympathy for this analysis does not prevent him from questioning the volume’s categories, especially its inclusion of privately organized cooperatives within a supposedly non-private economy. His concise assessment offers a useful distinction between ownership, political control, and economic performance, while endorsing the collection more firmly as an empirical account than as a theoretical clarification of public economic activity.
What makes salaried employees a distinct social group: the demands of their jobs, their distance from manual labour, or their legal status? In this brief review, Hans Bayer identifies all three as the basis of Wolfgang Linke’s argument. His appraisal is favourable but measured: he values the study’s clear organization and synthesis of relevant literature, while noting that its completion in 1960 left important later publications unaccounted for. The review offers a compact account of Linke’s criteria for social distinctiveness and shows precisely where Bayer locates the study’s usefulness—as a structured overview rather than an up-to-date survey.
More exact calculation need not make economic decisions less personal—or markets less subject to private power. In this 1965 article, Hans Bayer examines how electronic data processing enables firms not merely to adapt to competition but to shape its conditions. His distinctive concern is organizational: better coordination can extend the manageable size of enterprises, while the costs of computing and specialist personnel favor firms already large enough to afford them. Yet Bayer also sees shared optimization as an opportunity for smaller businesses. Cooperation among them, he argues, may preserve economic freedom more effectively than isolated rivalry. The article offers a concrete account of how computational capacity can redistribute economic agency, without mistaking improved forecasts for certainty or calculated alternatives for decisions that no longer require judgment.