Wilhelm Launhardt
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Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Launhardt (7 April 1832 – 14 May 1918) was a German mathematician and economist.
Launhardt was born in Hanover, the capital of the Kingdom of Hanover. He studied and taught at Hanover's technical school. Following Hanover's annexation by the Kingdom of Prussia, Launhardt served in the Prussian House of Lords.
Launhardt is one of the founders of both mathematical economics and spatial economics (or regional science). His main work, Mathematische Begründung der Volkswirtschaftslehre, was published in 1885 (translated into English by John Creedy as Mathematical Principles Of Economics in 1993). As an engineer, he contributed to the field of not only engineering, but also of economics and, in particular, to those parts in economics which can be treated fruitfully with mathematics. Launhardt developed his work independently from the French engineers, but based it squarely on the work of the agricultural engineer von Thünen. He made references to the economists Sax, Walras and Jevons. His main economic contribution lies in founding location theory but, beyond that, he contributed to the mathematical treatment of economics, labor economics, monetary economics and technology economics with a special emphasis on railway issues from a locational point of view.
In 1885 he succeeded in calculating the optimal rate of duties in the sense of the effects of the terms of trade.
[edit] Works
- The Theory of the Trace: Being a discussion of the principles of location, 1872
- "Die Bestimmung des Zweckmässigsten Standortes einer Gewerblichen Anlage", Zeitschrift des Vereines Deutscher Ingenieure, 1882
- Mathematische Begründung der Volkswirtschaftslehre, 1885.
- Theory of Network Planning, 1888.
