Education
Here young Schmoller studied Staatswissenschaften (a combination of economics, law, history and civil administration).
Here young Schmoller studied Staatswissenschaften (a combination of economics, law, history and civil administration).
As an outspoken leader of the "younger" historical school, Schmoller opposed what he saw as the axiomatic-deductive approach of classical economics and, later, the Austrian school — indeed, Schmoller coined the term to suggest provincialism in an unfavorable review of the 1883 bookInvestigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics (Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere) by Carl Menger, which attacked the methods of the historical school. This led to the controversy known as the Methodenstreit, which today often appears as a waste of energies and one of the main reasons for the later demise of the whole historical school, although — as Joseph Schumpeter once pointed out — this was really a quarrel within that school. Schmoller's primarilyinductive approach, requesting careful study, comparative in time and space, of economic performance and phenomena generally, his focus on the evolution of economic processes and institutions, and his insistence on the cultural specificity of economics and the centrality of values in shaping economic exchanges stand in stark contrast to some classical and mostneoclassical economists, so that he and his school fell out of the mainstream of economics by the 1930s, being replaced in Germany by the successor Freiburg school.
However, it is often overlooked that Schmoller's primary preoccupation in his lifetime was not with economic method but with economic and social policy to address the challenges posed by rapid industrialization and urbanization. That is, Schmoller was first and foremost a social reformer. As such, Schmoller's influence extended throughout Europe, to the Progressive movement in theUnited States, and to social reformers in Meiji Japan. His most prominent non-German students and followers included William J. Ashley, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard T. Ely, Noburu Kanai, Albion W. Small, and E.R.A. Seligman.
Since the 1980s Schmoller's work has been reevaluated and found relevant to some branches of heterodox economics, especially development economics, behavioral economics, evolutionary economics and neo-institutional economics. He has long had an influence within the subfield of economic history and the discipline of sociology.
After 1881 Schmoller was editor of the Jahrbuch für Gesetzebung, Verwaltung, und Volkswirthschaft im deutschen Reich. From 1878 to 1903 he edited a series of monographs entitled Staats- und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungen. He was also an editor and major contributor to Acta Borussica, an extensive collection of Prussian historical sources undertaken by the Berlin Academy of Science upon Schmoller's and Sybel's instigation.
1862 Der französiche Handelsvertrag und seine Gegner (The French trade treaty and its opponents)
1870 Zur geschichte der deutschen Kleingewerbe im 19. Jahrhundert (History of German Small Businesses in the 19th Century)
1875 Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkämpfe (Strassburg During the Guild Fights)
1888 Zur Litteraturgeschichte der Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften
1898 Umrisse und Untersuchungen zur Verfassungs-, Verwaltungs-, und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
1900–1904 Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirthschaftslehre (Layout of General Economics)
1904 Ueber einige Grundfragen der Sozialpolitik (About a few Questions of Social Politics)
Schmoller's influence on academic policy, economic, social and fiscal reform, and economics as an academic discipline for the time between 1875 and 1910 can hardly be overrated. He was also an outspoken proponent of the assertion of German naval power and the expansion of German overseas empire.
His father was a Württemberg civil servant.