Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Wagner, Richard E. --- "Carl Menger (1840-1921)" [1999] ELECD 44; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781858985169

Section: Chapter 37

Section Title: Carl Menger (1840-1921)

Author(s): Wagner, Richard E.

Number of pages: 8

Extract:

37 Carl Menger (1840-1921)
Richard E. Wagner


Carl Menger would surely occupy a secure place in anyone's pantheon of
influential economists. Along with William Stanley Jevons and Leon Walras,
his work in the early 1870s initiated the neoclassical or marginal utility
approach to economics. This approach continues to dominate economics
even today. Menger was also one of the three founders of what came to be
known as the Austrian School of economics, the other two being Eugen von
Bohm-Bawerk and Friedrich Freiherr von Wieser. Recognition of a distinc-
tive Austrian school emerged in the 1880s, flourished until the 1930s, then
entered a period of quiescence, though it has shown some signs of revival,
primarily in the United States, over the past two or three decades.

Life and work
The basic facts of Menger's life are simple and few. He was born in Galicia,
which now lies mainly across Poland and Ukraine, on what normally would
be the last day of February, save that his birth year, 1840, was a leap year. His
life as a university student commenced in 1859 with a year in Vienna, fol-
lowed by three years in Prague, and then Krakow where he wrote his
dissertation. In 1873, he was appointed to the University of Vienna where he
remained until his retirement in 1903, save for the 1876-8 period which he
spent tutoring and travelling with Crown Prince Rudolph. Menger retired
from his teaching duties at the early age of 63 ...