The German Historical School: The Historical and Ethical Approach to Economics. Edited by Yuichi Shionoya. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. xii, 224. $90.00

This book is based on papers submitted to a plenary session, organized at the annual meeting of the Japanese Society for the History of Economic Thought. It reflects growing interest in the work of those German scholars, active between the early 1800s and the 1950s, who are usually grouped as the German Historical School. Though economists, they were open to interdisciplinary work, some more historically minded, some more interested in contemporary sociology. The current they formed was international, but particularly strong in Germany. It was concerned with problems of economic evolution, with institutional factors, with ethics, and with the understanding of the changing forms of economic life and their succession. Though classed as a “school,” it may be argued that they were of heterogeneous orientations: politically, some were liberal, some conservative. The essays presented here testify to the amazingly extensive knowledge about the German Historical School in Japan. This has its roots, as is explained in the editor's introduction, in the foundation of Japanese universities on the model of German ones. Although the quality of the essays is not even, the scholarly love for detail and for penetration of the texts deserve praise.