Carl Menger was born in Galicia and received his doctorate in law from the University of Krakow. He was a professor of economics at the University of Vienna until 1903. Separately yet simultaneously, Leon Walras in France, William Stanley Jevons in England, and Carl Menger in Austria developed the theory of marginal utility to understand and explain consumer behavior. It is because of this that these three men are considered the founder's of the "marginal revolution". Unlike Jevons, Menger did no t believe that goods provided units of utility, but rather "goods were valuable because thay served various uses whose importance differed. Menger used his "subjective theory of value" to dispute the labor theory of value and to show that both sides gain from exchange.
According to Menger, money develops in an economy because trade is rarely completed in one or two transactions. The need for many intermediate trades is a hassle and people soon realize that this hassle can be reduced when they trade what they have for a good that is widely accepted.
Carl Menger is the founder of Austrian Econoomics. His work had an incredible influence on Friedrich August von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.
Works by Carl Menger:
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