Wilhelm Roscher

Such figures as Wilhelm Roscher and Karl Knies in Germany tended to dismiss the assumptions of timelessness and universality regarding economic behaviour that were axiomatic among the German followers of Smith, and they strongly insisted upon the developmental character of capitalism, evolving in a long series of stages…

…of the earlier school included Wilhelm Roscher, Bruno Hildebrand, and Karl Knies, whose works developed the idea of a historical method. They held that the merits of economic policies depended on place and time but that by studying various societies it would be possible to specify certain general stages of…

…group was the German economist Wilhelm Roscher. His work insisted on the importance of context—historical, social, and institutional—for understanding the laws of political economy, economic behaviour, and the empirical diversity of social life. Early research focused on the relationship between the social and economic organization of society, stages of development,…