Joseph Schumpeter

Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), Austrian-American economist and social theorist, born in Triesch, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), and educated at the University of Vienna. He began to practise law in Vienna in 1907, and, after winning recognition as an economic theorist, he taught economics for various periods at the universities of Vienna, Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), Graz, and Bonn after 1909. After visiting the United States as an exchange professor at Columbia University in 1913 and at Harvard University in 1927 and 1931, he received a permanent faculty appointment at Harvard in 1932.

Schumpeter remained at Harvard for the rest of his career. He achieved prominence for his theories about the vital importance of the entrepreneur in business, emphasizing the entrepreneur's role in stimulating investment and innovation, which determined the rise and ebb of prosperity. Schumpeter also predicted the socio-political disintegration of capitalism, which, he maintained, would be undermined eventually by its own success. His best-known books are The Theory of Economic Development (1911; trans. 1934), Business Cycles (1939), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942), and The History of Economic Analysis, published posthumously in 1954.