Joseph Schumpeter is one of the most accomplished economists of the twentieth century. Included among his many contributions is his path-breaking work on entrepreneurship—one of the quintessential characteristics of all market economies.
His timeless phrase describing the entrepreneurial process as one of “creative destruction” is likely second only to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in its daily use in popular tweets, blog posts, speeches, and articles. Renowned Chicago economist Jacob Viner praised Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis as “by a wide margin … the most brilliant contribution to the history of analytical phases of our discipline which has ever been made”. However, it is Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , in
During the 1980s there was a pronounced increase in scholarly interest in Schumpeter’s work as evidenced by the number of citations of his work surpassing citations of Keynes. This volume in the Essential Scholars series explores several of Joseph Schumpeter’s most important insights into entrepreneurship, business cycles, economic development, and the democratic process.