Carl Menger

Founder of the Austrian school of economics.

Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün was an Austrian economist born 28 February 1840 in Neu-Sandez, Austrian Empire, who founded the Austrian school of economics.^[1][2] He co-founded the marginal utility revolution, working separately from William Jevons and Leon Walras to reach similar conclusions by a different method.^[3]

Last updated 2026-09-28 from the source article.

Quick Facts

School of thought: Austrian school
Birth name: Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün
Born: 23 February 1840
Birthplace: Neu Sandez, Kingdom of Galicia, Austrian Empire (now Nowy Sącz, Poland)
Died: 26 February 1921
Place of death: Vienna, Austria
Resting place: Vienna Central Cemetery
Field: Political economy

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

In the 1860s he worked as a journalist reporting market news at the Lemberger Zeitung and later the Wiener Zeitung.^[4] During his newspaper work, he noticed a discrepancy between classical economics' price theory and real-world market behavior.^[5] Menger rejected classical cost-based theories of value, instead developing a subjective theory of value that emphasized mutual agreement in deriving prices.^[6][3] He used this insight to resolve the diamond-water paradox that had baffled Adam Smith.^[3]

In 1867 Menger commenced an investigation of political economy that resulted, in 1871, in the appearance of his work Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (translated as Principles of Economics).^[5][7] In 1876 Menger was appointed as a tutor in political economy to the Austrian Crown Prince, Rudolf.^[8][7] In 1878, the Crown Prince and Menger co-authored and published anonymously a pamphlet titled The Austrian Nobility and Its Constitutional Vocation: A Warning to Aristocratic Youth.^[8][7] During the 1890s, Menger participated in an Austrian commission assigned the task of formally establishing the country’s currency on a redeemable gold standard.^[7]

Menger continued teaching at the University of Vienna until 1903, when he retired to continue the theoretical work begun in his 1871 volume.^[7]

What the cited sources add

The Liberty Fund account states that Menger turned the labor theory of value on its head.^[3] It also notes that mainstream economists still accept Menger's theory of "derived demand."^[3] The Daily Economy article explains that the term "marginal utility" was coined by Friedrich von Wieser, not Menger himself.^[7] That same source describes Menger's emphasis that the idea of causality is inseparable from the idea of time.^[7]

The Daily Economy article also reports that Menger's son Karl published a slightly revised edition of the Grundsätze in 1923 using his father's handwritten notes.^[7] Friedrich Hayek wrote that the Austrian school's "fundamental ideas belong fully and wholly to Carl Menger."^[9]

References

Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün, o. Univ.-Prof. Dr.", 650 Plus, 28 June 2014; Mark Blaug, "Carl Menger (1840–1921)", E. Elgar, 1992, p. 46, 92; "Britannica - Carl Menger"; "Carl Menger facts, information, pictures Encyclopedia.com articles about Carl Menger", www.encyclopedia.com (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün, o. Univ.-Prof. Dr.", 650 Plus, 28 June 2014; "Britannica – Carl Menger" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
"Carl Menger (1840–1921)", Liberty Fund, 2008, p. 565–566. facts only, no text reused. econlib.org
Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Yagi, "Austrian and German Economic Thought: From Subjectivism to Social Evolution", Routledge, 2013-03-01, p. 10 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Mises Institute: Carl Menger: The Founding of the Austrian School", 8 July 2023; Hayek, "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and History of Ideas", Routledge and University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 270–282 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Carl Menger Austrian economist" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
"The daily Economy – Carl Menger", 5 January 2021. facts only, no text reused. thedailyeconomy.org
Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: The History of Economic Thought: A Reader (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "Carl Menger" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hayek, "The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics and the Ideal of Freedom", Routledge, 1992, p. 62 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Carl Menger (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.