Historical school of economics

The historical school of economics, also known as the "Prussian Historical School", was an approach to academic economics and to public administration that emerged in the 19th century in Germany, and held sway there until well into the 20th century. The professors involved compiled massive economic histories of Germany and Europe. Among the central tenets of this School was that "from her origins, it had been Prussia's historical mission to unite Germany". The School had a significant following among the bourgeois historians of the time, and focused on "reconstructing Prussia's military and bureaucratic achievements." The school was opposed by theoretical economists, and lost influence after about 1930.

Tenets

The historical school held that history was the key source of knowledge about human actions and economic matters, since economics was culture-specific, and hence not generalizable over space and time. The school rejected the universal validity of economic theorems. They saw economics as resulting from careful empirical and historical analysis instead of from logic and mathematics. The school also preferred reality, historical, political, and social, as well as economic, to mathematical modelling.