Karl Knies

Who was Karl Knies?

Karl Gustav Adolf Knies was a German economist of the historical school of economics, best known as the author of Political Economy from the Standpoint of the Historical Method. Knies taught at the University of Heidelberg for over 30 years, and was perhaps the most theoretically-oriented economist of the older historical school.

Like others in the German historical school, Knies disliked the attitudes of the "classical school", particularly their belief that the pursuit of individual self-interest redounded to the good of the community. In his Political Economy, page 157, he comments that self-interest is "in the public interest, so to speak, in its weakness, and dangerous in its strength".

Knies is very important to early American economics thought, as some of its founders studied under him, e.g., John Bates Clark attended from 1872 to 1875 the University of Zurich and the University of Heidelberg where he studied under him; Clark supervised the thesis of Frank Knight, who in turn influenced Paul Samuelson, who was the first to win the John Bates Clark Medal for the best American economist under age forty. Richard T. Ely studied under Knies and received his Ph.D in 1879 in Heidelberg.