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The Essential Joseph Schumpeter

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The Essential Joseph Schumpeter is a new book, accompanying website and animated video series that explores the key ideas of the most accomplished economists of the 20th century. In particular, it spotlights Schumpeter’s insights on entrepreneurship, innovation, competition and government.

Published by the Fraser Institute and co-authored by the Institute’s Jason Clemens and Russell S. Sobel of The Citadel, the book provides an accessible overview of Schumpeter’s insights on entrepreneurship, innovation, competition and government.

Perhaps best known for popularizing the term “creative destruction”—the process where new innovations arise and cause the old way of doing things to disappear—Schumpeter has had a lasting influence on the way economists view entrepreneurship, innovation and economic progress.

Born in 1883 outside Prague in what’s now the Czech Republic, Schumpeter was not a life-long academic. Having also worked in law and finance—and even serving as Austria’s Minister of Finance—Schumpeter returned to academia at Harvard University in the 1930s and was ultimately elected president of the American Economics Association, the first foreign-born economist to hold that title.


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