COHN, GUSTAV

COHN, GUSTAV (1840–1919), German economist. Cohn, who was born in Marienwerder, taught at the Riga Polytechnic from 1869 to 1872 and, after a few years in England, went to Switzerland in 1875 to become professor at the Zurich Institute of Technology. In 1885 he was called to the University of Goettingen, Germany, where he remained for the rest of his life. Cohn was not only a theoretician. Besides writing textbooks and studies of classical economic doctrines, he made important contributions to transportation and public finance. His investigations of the British railroad system in which he strongly advocated railroad amalgamation and public ownership became the basis of subsequent treatises on railroad theory. Together with Adolf Wagner (1835–1917), he was a leading representative of German Kathedersozialismus ("armchair socialism") during the second half of the 19th century. His publications include Untersuchungen ueber die englische Eisenbahnpolitik (1874–75), Finanzlage der Schweiz (1877), System der Nationaloekonomie (3 vols., 1885–98), and Volkswirtschaftliche Aufsaetze und Nationalekonomische Studien (1886). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wininger, Biog, 1 (1925). (Joachim O. Ronall)