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Streissler, Erich --- "Wilhelm Roscher (1817–94)" [2005] ELECD 175; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420321

Section: Chapter 51

Section Title: Wilhelm Roscher (1817–94)

Author(s): Streissler, Erich

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

51 Wilhelm Roscher (1817­94)
Erich Streissler


Life and work
Wilhelm Roscher was born in 1817 in Hannover (in a German kingdom then
still in personal monarchical union with Great Britain), the son of a high-
ranking civil servant in the Ministry of Justice. After studying and early
teaching at the University of Göttingen (doctorate 1838, university lecturer
1840), in 1848 he became professor of history and social sciences in Leipzig,
a university distinguished by its law faculty. He served in this position up to
his death in 1894. He is the main German-language textbook author of
economics in the second half of the nineteenth century, the term `textbook',
however, by far understating the scientific importance of his comprehensive
treatises. In its tripartite structure (theory­policy­public finance) roughly
following the innovative framework of Karl Heinrich Rau, his predecessor as
the dominant German economist a quarter of a century earlier, Roscher's
System of Economics deals with theory in Volume I, Foundations of National
Economics (1854), a book which ran to 26 editions up to 1922; followed by
Volume II, on agricultural economics (that is, economic policy, part I), first
published in 1859, a book of 14 editions; Volume III, published only in 1881,
on commerce and industry (that is, economic policy, part II), running to eight
editions; Volume IV, on public finance, published in 1886 (five editions); and,
finally, Volume V, System of the Poor Laws and the Policy towards the Poor,
published in 1894 (three editions), ...