Comparing Great Textbooks in Economics by Marshall, Tugan-Baranovsky and Schmoller

The following paper focuses on the special features of the national styles of the economic thought represented in textbooks in Russia, England and Germany in the end of the XIX century. In order to provide such comparative analysis the classical textbooks were chosen. The rationale is that studying differences and similarities of textbooks experienced many editions and approved by time may be as representative for revealing a common style as comparing national literary classics. Therefore, three great works turned to be under review: “Foundations of Political Economy” (1909) by Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, “Principles of Economics” (1890) of Alfred Marshall, and “Layout of General Economics” (1900-1904) by Gustav von Schmoller. All the three economists made an outstanding contribution to economic science. They tried to unite induction and deduction, abstract and concrete canons, materialistic and ethical sides of economics, in other words were synthesizers. As a result, it was discovered that the main differences lie in author’s attitude to the role of ethics in the economic science, involving Marx’s theoretical system in the analysis, the degree of maturity of the economic science in general and employment of theoretical mathematical models and use of empirical data. English textbook turned to be more practical and useful for the business people as well, Russian one was more theoretical and full of ethical reasoning, and the German treatise was aimed more at helping policy-makers.