Karl Knies

Karl Gustav Adolf Knies (29 March 1821 – 3 August 1898) was a German economist.

He is known as the author of Political Economy from the Standpoint of the Historical Method, one of the 19th century methodological treatises on German historical school of economics. He taught at the University of Heidelberg for over 30 years and was maybe 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' (Adam Smith, David Ricardo and their followers), particularly their belief that the pursuit of individual self-interest redounded to the good of the community. In his 'Political Economy' (Braunschweig, 1853) he comments on page 157 that self-interest is 'in the public interest, so to speak, in its weakness and dangerous in its strength' (gemeinnützig, so zu sagen, in seine Schwäche und gefährlich in seine Stärke).

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

Some of his works are:

• Statistics (1850)
• Political Economy from the Standpoint of the Historical Method, (1. ed., 1853, 2. ed., 1883)
• Money and Credit (1873-6, 2. ed., 1885)