The German Historical School, Schumpeter and Ichiro Nakayama: Economic Theory and Economic Sociology

Recently the influence of the German Historical School on Alfred Marshall and Joseph Schumpeter has been discussed: both Marshall and Schumpeter were in fact highly influenced by the German Historical School (Hodgson, 2008). In particular, Schmoller’s impact on both has been stressed, and Schumpeter’s methodological adherence to Schmoller is well known from his 1926 article on Schmoller, Gustav v. Schmoller und die Probleme von heute. There have been positive discussions on Marshall and Schumpeter with regard to ‘a reasoned history’ or ‘histoire raisonnee’ and on their ideas of economic sociology, further on the legitimate boundaries of economics as a discipline. It has been argued: although both Marshall and Schumpeter admitted the legitimate role of pure economic theory as the economic organon or economic logic, they were not satisfied with it because it was unable to explain the problems of real life, and refused to separate the study of economic factors from that of social, cultural and institutional factors at a more advanced stage of knowledge (Shionoya, 1997, 2001; Nishizawa, 2007; Shionoya and Nishizawa, 2008).