Professor Georgi Danailov – a forerunner of institutionalism in Bulgaria

This article gives an overview of the life and work of Bulgarian economist Georgi Danailov in the beginning of the 20th century. Studied consequently in Moscow, Berlin, Munich and Vienna under such influential scholars of his time as Chuprov, Yanzhulov, Schmoller, Sombart and Brentano, Danailov became one of the first professors of political economy at the “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia, established and presided over the respective chair and was among the founding fathers of Bulgarian statistics, demographics and economic history. His textbooks in the above disciplines were extensively used until World War II. A summary is given of Danailov’s major work “Basic principles of the Political Economy” (1906 and 1934) in which he tried to combine the main ideas of German historical school and Russian legal Marxism with classical economic theory. Social institutions are in the center of his analysis making him one of the forerunners of institutional thought in Bulgaria.