Social Policy Association

The Verein für Socialpolitik (Social Policy Association) is an important society of economists in the German-speaking area.

The Verein was founded in Eisenach in 1872 as a response to the "social question". Among its founders were eminent economists like Gustav von Schmoller, Lujo Brentano and Adolph Wagner, who sought a middle path between socialist and laissez-faire economic policies. The liberal publicist Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim, critical of their "fanciful positions", dubbed them the Kathedersozialisten (socialists of the chair), meant as pejorative term. Among its later members were prominent sociologists like Max Weber and Werner Sombart. They took part in the famous Werturteilsstreit with the older generation of the Verein just before the First World War. The Verein was dissolved in 1936 under the Nazis, but was re-created in 1948 at a conference in Marburg.

Today the Verein has its seat in Frankfurt am Main. It currently has around 3,800 individual members and 48 corporate members. It publishes a monograph series, the Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Neu Folge), as well as two journals: the German Economic Review and Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik. It annually awards the Gossen Prize to German-speaking economists under the age of 45. Another award given by the association is the Gustav Stolper Prize; it is named after economist Gustav Stolper, and is not subject to any age restrictions.

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