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Science lost, science found in the post WWII Austrian economics movement: The case of Emil Kauder

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  • Janek Wasserman

    (University of Alabama)

Abstract

In studies of the Austrian School of Economics, Emil Kauder frequently gets lost in the shuffle. This article reconstructs his intellectual biography. His biographical trajectory diverged sharply from his Austrian brethren. Born and trained in Germany, his educational background little resembled his peers’. Beginning as an economic historian trained by Werner Sombart, he became a devotee of marginalism in his thirties. A lack of academic recognition limited his research opportunities and theoretical work, yet he shaped the later Austrian movement by tutoring a young Ludwig Lachmann on marginal utility theory. After the rise of Nazism, he suffered intense persecution as a Jew and a conservative liberal. His emigration was arduous and disorienting, leading him to have an eclectic and peripatetic postwar career. Despite these encumbrances, Kauder made signal contributions to the recovery and advancement of Austrian ideas in the United States, particularly in his painstaking, nearly obsessive, cataloging of Carl Menger’s library in Japan and his articles on Austrian marginalism, which culminated in the 1965 History of Marginal Utility Theory. Friendly with Austrians as different as Karl Menger, Morgenstern and Mises, and cited approvingly (and consistently) by Murray Rothbard, Kauder offered a historical understanding of the Austrian School that appealed to the disparate strands of the tradition, yet left him at a remove from his more theoretically inclined comperes. Unraveling the tangled skeins of Kauder’s intellectual biography reveals a great deal about the state of Austrianism and its place in the US intellectual landscape of the mid-twentieth century.

Suggested Citation

  • Janek Wasserman, 2020. "Science lost, science found in the post WWII Austrian economics movement: The case of Emil Kauder," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 107-120, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:33:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11138-019-00438-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11138-019-00438-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hansjörg Klausinger, 2006. ""In the Wilderness†: Emigration and the Decline of the Austrian School," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 38(4), pages 617-664, Winter.
    2. Kauder, Emil, 1959. "Menger and his Library," Economic Review, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 10(1), pages 58-64, January.
    3. Janek Wasserman, 2016. "“Un-Austrian” Austrians? Haberler, Machlup, and Morgenstern, and the Post-Emigration Elaboration of Austrian Economics," Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, in: Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, volume 34, pages 93-124, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    4. Emil Kauder, 1953. "The Retarded Acceptance of the Marginal Utility Theory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 67(4), pages 564-575.
    5. John P. Henderson, 1955. "The Retarded Acceptance of the Marginal Utility Theory: Comment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(3), pages 465-473.
    6. Peter J. Boettke, 2002. "The Use and Abuse of the History of Economic Thought within the Austrian School of Economics," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 34(5), pages 337-360, Supplemen.
    7. Erwin Dekker, 2016. "Left luggage: finding the relevant context of Austrian Economics," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 103-119, June.
    8. Earlene Craver, 1986. "The Emigration of the Austrian Economists," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 1-32, Spring.
    9. Emil Kauder, 1970. "Austro-Marxism vs. Austro-Marginalism," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 398-418, Fall.
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    Cited by:

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Emil Kauder; Marginal utility theory; Austrian school of economics; History of economic thought; German emigration; Carl Menger;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B1 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925
    • B13 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Neoclassical through 1925 (Austrian, Marshallian, Walrasian, Wicksellian)
    • B25 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; Stockholm School
    • B53 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Austrian

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