IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/icr/wpicer/11-2011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Power And Entrepreneurship In German Political Economy: The Cases Of Werner Sombart And Friedrich Von Wieser

Author

Listed:
  • Gilles Campagnolo
  • Christel Vivel

Abstract

In the present paper we are going to examine texts by Werner Sombart and Friedrich von Wieser on entrepreneurship and the capitalist economy using an interdisciplinary approach focused on economics but also dealing with economic sociology and political philosophy. We believe that both authors have been largely neglected, thus overlooking the main source of the theory of the entrepreneur in debates held in German language and between Germany and Austria around the 1900s. Without excluding earlier major references (such as Jean-Baptiste Say, the first French economist at the Collège de France) we shall demonstrate that for both our authors the entrepreneur is the keystone of a renewed understanding of capitalism and the modern economy of their times. They stressed the origins, functions and roles of the entrepreneur and showed that there cannot exist only a single entrepreneurial form but there must necessarily be several ones, depending on the context. Two lessons can be drawn from their texts: 1/ the entrepreneur’s action needs to be reinstalled in the social, economic and institutional context; 2/ the results of the actions of entrepreneurs are inherently difficult to predict because the action responds to institutional changes and is the outcome of such changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles Campagnolo & Christel Vivel, 2011. "Power And Entrepreneurship In German Political Economy: The Cases Of Werner Sombart And Friedrich Von Wieser," ICER Working Papers 11-2011, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:icr:wpicer:11-2011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bemservizi.unito.it/repec/icr/wp2011/ICERwp11-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Ekelund & Mark Thornton, 1987. "Wieser and the Austrian connection to social economics," Forum for Social Economics, Springer;The Association for Social Economics, vol. 16(2), pages 1-12, September.
    2. Shionoya,Yuichi, 1997. "Schumpeter and the Idea of Social Science," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521430340, September.
    3. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226320625 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gilles Campagnolo & Christel Vivel, 2020. "Kirzner and Rothbard on an Austrian theory of entrepreneurship: the heirs of both Menger and Mises discuss action and the role of institutions," Working Papers halshs-03107316, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jan Fagerberg, 2003. "Schumpeter and the revival of evolutionary economics: an appraisal of the literature," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 125-159, April.
    2. Harald Hagemann, 2015. "Capitalist development, innovations, business cycles and unemployment: Joseph Alois Schumpeter and Emil Hans Lederer," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 117-131, January.
    3. Lucarelli, Stefano & Baron, Hervé, 2014. "On Schumpeter’s 'The Past and Future of Social Sciences'. A Schumpeterian Theory of Scientific Development?," MPRA Paper 60391, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Andreas Pyka & Uwe Cantner & Alfred Greiner & Thomas Kuhn (ed.), 2009. "Recent Advances in Neo-Schumpeterian Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12982.
    5. Kurt Dopfer, 2012. "The origins of meso economics," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 133-160, January.
    6. Markus Becker & Thorbjørn Knudsen & Richard Swedberg, 2012. "Schumpeter’s Theory of Economic Development: 100 years of development," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 917-933, November.
    7. Agnes Festre & Pierre Garrouste, 2008. "Rationality, behavior, institutional, and economic change in Schumpeter," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 365-390.
    8. Mário Graça Moura, 2017. "Schumpeter and the meanings of rationality," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 115-138, January.
    9. Agnieszka Lipieta & Andrzej Malawski, 2016. "Price versus quality competition: in search for Schumpeterian evolution mechanisms," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(5), pages 1137-1171, December.
    10. Bögenhold, Dieter, 2014. "Schumpeter's Idea of a Universal Science," MPRA Paper 58115, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Madarász, Aladár, 2008. "Visszatérhet-e a "nagy elmélet" a közgazdaságtanban?. Megjegyzések a rendszerparadigma elmélettörténetéhez [Can the grand theory" return to economics?. Notes on the theoretical histo," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 95-106.
    12. Festré, Agnès & Garrouste, Pierre, 2016. "Wieser As A Theorist Of Institutional Change," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(4), pages 463-483, December.
    13. Agnes Festre & Eric Nasica, 2009. "Schumpeter on money, banking and finance: an institutionalist perspective," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 325-356.
    14. Seo, Takashi, 2021. "Schumpeter's paradox reconsidered: The need for a theory of circular flow," MPRA Paper 106802, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Faridah Djellal & Faïz Gallouj, 2014. "The laws of imitation and invention: Gabriel Tarde and the evolutionary economics of innovation," Working Papers halshs-00960607, HAL.
    16. Remy Guichardaz & Julien Pénin, 2021. "Entrepreneurs “from within”? Schumpeter and the challenge of endogenizing novelty," Working Papers of BETA 2021-41, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    17. Rahmeyer Fritz, 2013. "Schumpeter, Marshall, and Neo-Schumpeterian Evolutionary Economics: A Critical Stocktaking," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 233(1), pages 39-64, February.
    18. Dahms Harry F., 2015. "Which Capital, Which Marx? Basic Income between Mainstream Economics, Critical Theory, and the Logic of Capital," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 115-140, June.
    19. Panayotis G. Michaelides & John G. Milios & Angelos Vouldis & Spyros Lapatsioras, 2010. "Heterodox influences on Schumpeter," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 37(3), pages 197-213, February.
    20. Zweynert, Joachim, 2007. "How can the History of Economic thought Contribute to an Understanding of Institutional Change?," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(2), pages 189-211, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:icr:wpicer:11-2011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Daniele Pennesi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icerrit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.