| Gustav Von Schmoller |
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| 1838 births | |
| schmoller, gustav von | |
| 1917 deaths | |
| german economists | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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LIFE Schmoller was born in Heilbronn . His father was a Württemberg civil servant. Young Schmoller studied ''Staatswissenschaften'' (a combination of Economics , History and Civil Administration ) in Tübingen . During his academic career he held posts of a professor in Halle (1864-72), Strasbourg (1872-82), and Berlin (1882-1913), then the most important university in Europe, if not in the world. He was a leading member of the '' Kathedersozialist en'' (socialists of the chair), and a founder and long-time chairman of the '' Verein Für Socialpolitik '', the German Economics Association, which today still exists. Schmoller's influence on academic policy, economic and fiscal reform, and economics as an academic discipline for the time between 1875 and 1910 can hardly be overrated. WORK As an outspoken leader of the "younger" historical school, Schmoller was against what he saw as the axiomatic-deductive approach of the Austrian School . This lead to the controversy known as the '' Methodenstreit '', which today often appears as being one of the main reasons for the later demise of the whole historical school, although - as Schumpeter had pointed out - this was really a quarrel ''within'' that school. In fact, Schmoller's primarily Deductive approach, requesting careful study, comparative in time and space, of economic performance and phenomena generally, and his insistence on the cultural specificity of economics, stand in stark contrast to some Classical and all Neoclassical Economists , so that he and his school soon after his death, but at the latest around 1935, fell out of the mainstream. Today, Schmoller is largely forgotten within "standard textbook economics", even within Germany. Schmoller is becoming slowly reevaluated since the late 1980s, especially within some branches of Heterodox economics, especially Development Economics , Evolutionary Economics and Neo-institutional Economics . BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Schmoller One of the reasons of Schmoller's being forgotten is that his myriad of books were not translated into English, because at his time, Anglo-American economists generally read German. An exception is
His '' Magnum Opus '',
is not available in translation, which makes reception today very difficult. The ''Grundriss'' has often been mentioned as one of the most disparaged books in economic history as compared to how many people have actually read it; it might even outrank Marx 's '' Das Kapital '' in this respect. Important recent books on Schmoller in English
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