[...]... Reprint of Menger s Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre which constitutes the first of a series of four Reprints embodying Menger s chief published contributions to Economic Science and which were published by the London School of Economics as Numbers 17 to 20 of its Series of Reprints of Scarce Works in Economics and Political Science 11 12 Principles of Economics known as those of Carl Menger It... background of the work of Carl Menger, a few words on the general position of economics at that time are required Although the quarter of a century between about 1848, the date of J.S Mill’s Principles, and the emergence of the new school saw in many ways the greatest triumphs of the classical political economy in the applied fields, its foundations, particularly its theory Introduction 13 of value,... close 30 Principles of Economics This evidence, the first of a series of contributions to monetary problems, was the final and mature product of several years of concentration on these questions The results of these were published in rapid succession in the course of the same year—a year during which there appeared a greater number of publications from Menger s hand than at any other period of his life... on the effects of the gold discoveries: in some respects Menger s later views are nearly related to those of Cairnes.1 But while Menger s earlier contributions, particularly the introduction of the concepts of the different degrees of “saleability” of commodities as the basis for the understanding of the functions of money, would have secured him an honourable position in the history of monetary doctrines,... achievement springs directly from Menger His exposition of the meaning of the different concepts of the value of money, the causes of changes and the possibility of a measurement of this value, as well as his discussion of the factors determining the demand for money, all seem to me to represent a most significant advance beyond the traditional treatment of the quantity theory in terms of aggregates and averages... elucidation of the origin and character of social institutions which might, with advantage, be read by present-day economists and sociologists Of the central contentions of the book only one may be singled out for further comment; his emphasis on the necessity of a strictly 24 Principles of Economics individualistic or, as he generally says, atomistic method of analysis It has been said of him by one of his... forever remain Mengerian economics.”8 Peter G Klein University of Missouri 7 Hayek, “Introduction,” p 13; and this volume 8 Joseph T Salerno, Carl Menger: The Founder of the Austrian School,” in Randall G Holcombe, ed., Fifteen Great Austrian Economists (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), p 71 INTRODUCTION CARL MENGER 1 By F.A Hayek T he history of economics is full of tales of forgotten... it as particularly useful 2Anton Menger, the father of Carl, was the son of another Anton Menger, who came from an old German family that had in 1623 emigrated to Eger in Bohemia, and of Anna née Muller His wife, Caroline, was the daughter of Josef Gerzabek, merchant in Hohenmaut, and of Therese, née Kalaus, whose ancestors can be traced in the register of baptism of Hohenmaut back into the 17th and... contribution to the central problem of the value of money Until the work of Professor Mises twenty years later, the direct continuation of Menger s work, this article remained the main contribution of the “Austrian School” to the theory of money It is worth while dwelling a little on the nature of this contribution, for it is a matter on which there is still much misunderstanding It is often thought that the Austrian... respectively 16 Principles of Economics bought a large estate in Western Galicia where Carl Menger spent a great part of his boyhood, and before 1848 still saw the conditions of semi-servitude of the peasants which, in this part of Austria had persisted longer than in any part of Europe outside Russia With his two brothers, Anton, later the well-known writer on law and socialism, author of the Right to . little 11 INTRODUCTION CARL M ENGER By F.A. Hayek 1 12 Principles of Economics known as those of Carl Menger. It is difficult to think of a parallel case where. University of Vienna and founder of the Austrian School of economics. Menger s pathbreaking Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Principles of economics),