Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte (May 2022)
Glücksspiel oder ökonomisches Werturteil mit Folgen?
Abstract
Despite his prominence in the socio-political debate on the German housing market before the First World War, Rudolph Eberstadt’s (1856-1922) concept of speculation is largely ignored today by German scholars of economics and economic history. Accordingly, speculative operations on markets are seen rather to determine economic values than to merely assess them. Through the channel of the prevailing institutions of credit and property, they determine future values as well as the modalities of how the real economy will produce their corresponding equivalents. Eberstadt’s conceptual works on the general notion of speculation rely on his institutional-economic investigation of the housing market in metropolitan areas. He conceives loan-financed speculative deals as a legally backed instrument of redistribution, which serves the private sector to realize capital gains from mere value assessments. His approach critically highlights the normative power of financial liabilities from a politicoeconomic perspective. The severe criticism that this approach evoked on the part of market-liberal economists may explain why academics largely ignore Eberstadt’s insights today.
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