Schumpeter, Joseph A

Schumpeter, Joseph A(lois)

(born Feb. 8, 1883, Triesch, Moravia—died Jan. 8, 1950, Taconic, Conn., U.S.) Moravian-U.S. economist and sociologist. Educated in Austria, he taught at several European universities before joining the faculty of Harvard University (1932–50). He became known for his theories of capitalist development and the business cycle. His popular book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942) argued that capitalism would eventually perish of its own success. His posthumous History of Economic Analysis (1954) is an exhaustive study of the development of analytic methods in economics.