Otto Conrad (economist)

Otto Gustav Conrad (born June 22, 1876 in Schleinz , Lower Austria; † December 27, 1943 in Vienna ) was an Austrian economist , private lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology and executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Commerce and Industry in Vienna.

Life

Otto Conrad was born in 1876 as the third of five children of court attorney and lawyer Dr. Michael Otto Conrad (* 1841 Herrmannstadt) and his wife Gisa Conrad nee Motesiczky (1852–1929). His eldest brother Walter was married to Lene Billroth, a daughter of Theodor Billroth . There was a close family friendship with the Exner siblings Franz-Serafin , Adolf , Marie and Franz as well as with Hans Benndorf . He studied economics at the University of Vienna. After working as a consultant for the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Vienna, he worked as a clerk at the Chamber of Commerce in Reichenberg before moving to Vienna in 1911 (?) As Chief Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Commerce and Industry.

He received his doctorate in 1900 from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Vienna and later qualified as a professor at the Technical University in Vienna for economics.

His most important role models were Adolph Wagner and Gustav Cassel . He wrote various monographs and numerous academic articles on problems in economics that deal with the complex mechanisms of the market. He left behind three children: Trautl, Klaus and Otto.

Act

As a representative of new theories of political economy he sat down early with different questions of economic theory apart, including market mechanisms, pricing, free competition, unearned income, theory of interest on capital, rejecting the Grenznutzen- and attribution theory, working as a production factor and pricing processes. His lack of university recognition can be attributed, among other things, to the fact that his critical views often contradicted the prevailing opinion of the Austrian school , for example . This led to numerous arguments with various theses of economic theory by Eugen Böhm von Bawerk ( interest theory ), Emil Lederer ( mass unemployment ), Othmar Spann (expedient versus causal explanatory mechanisms of economic processes ), Hans Mayer (dynamic theory of the price formation process ), Oskar Morgenstern ( equilibrium theories of Marktes), Ludwig von Mises (failure of market mechanisms ), August von Hayek (causes of economic paralysis) and others.

Works

Monographs

• Wages and pensions, Franz Deuticke Verlag, Leipzig and Vienna 1909
• The theory of subjective value as the basis of price theory, Franz Deuticke Verlag, Leipzig and Vienna 1912
• Lack of sales and unemployment as a permanent condition, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky AG, Vienna and Leipzig 1926
• The Mechanism of the Transport Industry, Gustav Fischer, Jena 1931

Individual representations

• Interest on Capital, Yearbooks of Economics and Statistics , 1908
• Böhm-Bawerk's thesis of the greater productivity of capitalist…, Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics, 1911
• The subjective value as the basis of the interest theory Böhm-Bawerks, year books for economics and statistics, 1913
• The principle of performance and consideration, 1912
• The individualistic economic order and the war, 1917
• Why do we have to save, 1918
• Limits to Economic Policy, 1918
• The position of the national democrats between the bourgeois parties and the social democrats, 1919
• Economic policy and its sins
• The crisis of the idea of ​​socialization
• Lack of sales and unemployment as a permanent condition, 1926
• Economic Policy or Acquisition Policy, 1919
• The starting point of theoretical economics, a discussion with Gustav Cassel, Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics, 1927
• The collapse of the marginal utility theory, a discussion with Joseph Schumpeter, Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics, 1928
• The question of the performance principle ..., 1929
• Fascism in Italy, 1929?
• The process of integrating the unemployed, 1931
• Interventionism as the cause of the economic crisis. A discussion with Ludwig Mises, Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics, 1932
• The priority assignment in its effect on intermediate mortgages: A study on § 30 of the Austrian Land Register Act v. July 25, 1871, RGB 95, Vienna
• The Mechanism of Transport Economics, A Reply, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, 1932
• The chaos of the crisis declarations, Zeitschr. Austrian Engineer and architect. Association, 1933
• The reduction in prices as a way to recover the economy, Manzsche Verlags- u. Univ. Bookstore, Vienna 1932
• The possibilities of expanding the need for work, a discussion with Emil Lederer, year books for economics and statistics, 1933
• The End of the Automatic Market Mechanism, Yearbooks of Economics and Statistics, 1933
• The basic mistake of Othmar Spann's teaching, Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics, 1933
• Causal and functional relationships in the economic mechanism, a discussion with Hans Mayer, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, 1933
• The myth of the stimulus factor, Wiener Wirtschaftswoche, January 1933
• The deadly sin of political economy, Leipzig / Vienna 1934
• The Mechanism of Commercial Economy, A Reply, Yearbook for Economics and Statistics, 1934
• Prices and Production. A discussion with Friedrich A. Hayek, Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics, 1934
• The basic assumptions of the equilibrium theory, a discussion with Oskar Morgenstern, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, 1936
• Equilibrium theory and inertia theory, a discussion with Peter Struwe, year books for economics and statistics, 1937
• The starting point of the theory of international trade: An attempt to reconcile the foreign trade theories of Gottfried Haberler et al. Bertil Ohlins, 1937

literature

• Otto Conrad: The Mechanism of the Transport Industry. A reply. In: Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie . Volume 3, No. 5, 1932, pp. 773-778, doi : 10.1007 / BF01322823 .
• Karl Mainz: The Mechanism of the Transport Industry. In: Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie . Volume 3, No. 4, 1932, pp. 616-632, doi : 10.1007 / BF01320164 .
• H. Mayer: The economic theory of the present. 2 volumes. Springer, Vienna 1932.
• Oskar Morgenstern: Perfect foresight and economic balance. In: Journal of Economics. 1935.
• Fischer: Lexicon AZ, Economy, 1958.
• Peter Quante: Review Otto Conrad. The deadly sin of economics. In: Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics. 1937?
• Wolfgang Heller, Otto Conrad: The mechanism of the traffic economy. In: Journal for the entire political science. 1932.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Conrad in the catalog of the German National Library
• Criticism of the production factors concept (PDF file; 145 kB)
• Conrad Otto. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 152 f. (Direct links on p. 152 , p. 153 ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deborah Coen, Vienna in the age of Uncertainty, Univ. Of Chicago, 2008