As an outspoken leader of the "younger" historical school, Schmoller opposed what he saw as the
axiomatic-deductive approach of
classical economics and, later, the
Austrian school—indeed, Schmoller coined the term to suggest provincialism in an unfavorable review of the 1883 book
Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics (Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere) by
Carl Menger, which attacked the methods of the historical school. This led to the controversy known as the
Methodenstreit. Schmoller's primarily
inductive approach, requesting careful study, comparative in time and space, He was a critic of liberal individualism. As such, Schmoller's influence extended throughout Europe, to the
Progressive movement in the
United States, and to social reformers in
Meiji Japan. His most prominent non-German students and followers included
William Ashley,
W. E. B. Du Bois,
Richard T. Ely,
Albion Woodbury Small, and
Edwin R. A. Seligman. Since the 1980s, Schmoller's work has been re-evaluated and found relevant to some branches of
heterodox economics, as well as
development economics,
behavioral economics,
evolutionary economics, and
new institutional economics. He has long had an influence within the subfield of
economic history and the discipline of
sociology. After 1881, Schmoller was editor of the
Jahrbuch für Gesetzebung, Verwaltung, und Volkswirthschaft im deutschen Reich. From 1878 to 1903, he edited a series of monographs entitled
Staats- und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungen. He was also an editor and major contributor to
Acta Borussica, an extensive collection of Prussian historical sources undertaken by the
Berlin Academy of Science upon Schmoller's and
Sybel's instigation. One of the reasons why Schmoller is not more widely known today is that most of his books and articles were not translated, as during his time Anglo-American economists generally read German, which was the dominant scholarly language of the time. German having fallen out of favor, the untranslated texts are now inaccessible to readers without knowledge of German. Two exceptions are: •
The Mercantile System and Its Historical Significance, New York: Macmillan, 2nd ed. 1910. This is a chapter from Schmoller's much larger work
Studien über die wirtschaftliche Politik Friedrichs des Grossen which was published in 1884. The chapter was translated by William J. Ashley and published in 1897 under the English title above. online edition • "The Idea of Justice in Political Economy."
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 4 (1894): 697–737. in JSTOR His
magnum opus is •
Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1900–1904. == Criticism ==