Editing Carl Menger (section)

==Biography==

=== Family and education ===
Carl Menger von Wolfensgrün<ref name="auto"/> was born in the city of [[Nowy Sącz|Neu-Sandez]] in the [[Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria]], [[Austrian Empire]], which is now [[Nowy Sącz]] in Poland.<ref>{{cite web |title=Britannica -Carl Menger |url=https://www.britannica.com/money/Carl-Menger}}</ref> He was the son of a wealthy family of minor nobility; his father, Anton Menger, was a lawyer. His mother, Caroline Gerżabek, was the daughter of a wealthy [[Bohemia]]n merchant. He had two brothers, [[Anton Menger|Anton]] and Max, both prominent as lawyers. His son, [[Karl Menger]], was a mathematician who taught for many years at [[Illinois Institute of Technology]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Remembering Karl Menger|url=http://www.iit.edu/csl/events/archive/remembering_menger.shtml|access-date=March 26, 2009|publisher=[[Illinois Institute of Technology]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090402052624/http://www.iit.edu/csl/events/archive/remembering_menger.shtml|archive-date=April 2, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref>

After attending [[Gymnasium (school)|Gymnasium]], he studied law at the universities of [[Charles University|Prague]]<ref>{{cite web |title=The daily Economy- Carl Menger |date=5 January 2021 |url=https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/carl-menger-and-the-sesquicentennial-founding-of-the-austrian-school/}}</ref> and [[University of Vienna|Vienna]] and later received a doctorate in jurisprudence from the [[Jagiellonian University]] in Kraków. In the 1860s Menger left school and enjoyed a stint as a journalist reporting and analyzing market news, first at the ''Lemberger Zeitung'' in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now [[Lviv]], Ukraine) and later at the {{Lang|de|[[Wiener Zeitung]]}} in Vienna.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

=== Career ===
During the course of his newspaper work, he noticed a discrepancy between what the classical economics he was taught in school said about [[price]] determination and what real world market participants believed. In 1867, Menger began a study of [[political economy]] which culminated in 1871 with the publication of his ''[[Principles of Economics (Menger book)|Principles of Economics]]'' ({{Lang|de|Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre}}), thus becoming the father of the [[Austrian school of economics]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Mises Institute: Carl Menger: The Founding of the Austrian School |date=8 July 2023 |url=https://mises.org/articles-interest/carl-menger-founding-austrian-school}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last= Hayek |first= Friedrich |author-link= Friedrich Hayek |chapter= The Place of Menger's Grundsätze in the History of Economic Thought |title= New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and History of Ideas |place= London and Chicago |publisher= Routledge and University of Chicago Press |year= 1978 |pages= [https://archive.org/details/newstudiesinphil0000haye/page/270/mode/2up?view=theater 270-282] |url=https://archive.org/details/newstudiesinphil0000haye/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater |url-access= registration |via= [[Internet Archive]]}}</ref> It was in this work that he challenged classical cost-based theories of value with his theory of marginality – that price is determined at the margin.

In 1872 Menger was enrolled into the law faculty at the [[University of Vienna]] and spent the next several years teaching finance and political economy both in seminars and lectures to a growing number of students. In 1873, he received the university's chair of economic theory at the very young age of 33.

In 1876 Menger began tutoring Archduke [[Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria|Rudolf von Habsburg]], the crown prince of Austria, in political economy and statistics. For two years, Menger accompanied the prince during his travels, first through continental Europe and then later through the British Isles.<ref>The History of Economic Thought: A Reader</ref> He is also thought to have assisted the crown prince in the composition of a pamphlet, published anonymously in 1878, which was highly critical of the higher Austrian aristocracy. His association with the prince would last until [[Mayerling incident|Rudolf's suicide in 1889]].

In 1878 Rudolf's father, Emperor [[Franz Joseph I of Austria|Franz Joseph]], appointed Menger to the chair of political economy at Vienna. The title of ''[[Hofrat]]'' was conferred on him, and he was appointed to the Austrian {{Lang|de|[[Imperial Council (Austria)|Herrenhaus]]}} in 1900.

==== Dispute with the historical school ====
Ensconced in his professorship, he set about refining and defending the positions he took and methods he utilized in ''Principles'', the result of which was the 1883 publication of ''Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics'' (''{{Lang|de|Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere}}''). The book caused a firestorm of debate, during which members of the [[historical school of economics]] began to derisively call Menger and his students the "Austrian school" to emphasize their departure from mainstream German economic thought – the term was specifically used in an unfavourable review by [[Gustav von Schmoller]].

In 1884 Menger responded with the pamphlet ''The Errors of Historicism in German Economics'' and launched the infamous {{Lang|de|[[Methodenstreit]]}}, or methodological debate, between the historical school and the Austrian school. During this time Menger began to attract like-minded disciples who would go on to make their own mark on the field of economics, most notably [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]], and [[Friedrich von Wieser]].

In the late 1880s, Menger was appointed to head a commission to reform the Austrian monetary system. Over the course of the next decade, he authored a plethora of articles which would revolutionize [[monetary theory]], including "The Theory of Capital" (1888) and "Money" (1892).<ref>"On the Origin of Money" (English translation by Caroline A. Foley), ''Economic Journal'', Volume 2 (1892), pp. 239–55.</ref> Largely due to his pessimism about the state of German scholarship, Menger resigned his professorship in 1903 to concentrate on study.