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Russian classical economist.
Heinrich Friedrich von Storch (usually known simply as Heinrich/Henri/Henry Storch, also known by his Russian patronymic as Andrei Karlovich Storch) was of Baltic German origin, born in Riga (Latvia), then part of the Russian empire. Storch received part of his education abroad in Germany, at Jena and Heidelberg. During that period, he undertook a tour of France, publishing his impressions in a travel book in 1787.
In 1788, Storch returned to Russia to become a teacher in fine arts at the Cadet College in St. Petersburg, and in 1790 was attached to the foreign ministry. He was appointed to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1796. In 1799, Storch was appointed tutor of Tsar Paul I's children, the grand dukes Nicholas and Michael.
An empiricist by inclination, Storch produced a monumental collection of historical statistics for the Russian empire (1797-1803). But Storch's most famous work was probably his Cours d'économie politique, published in French in St. Petersburg in 1815, for the education of the Tsar's family. Storch's Cours is essentially a re-statement of classical economics, much of it loosely paraphrased from Adam Smith and the French Liberal works of Comte Garnier and J.B. Say. But parts of it were quite original - and some historians credit Storch with prescient notions of the concepts of comparative advantage, public goods, and social and human capital. He also articulated a theory of stages of development, with different economic principles operative at different stages.. Storch's work elicited commentaries from Say and Rau for their French (1823) and German (1819) editions. His memoirs for the academy, notably those on value in 1807-09, critique Smith's labor theory of value, and emphasize subjective value theory.
A proponent of free trade, Storch is credited (or accused) by some of persuading Tsar Alexander I to introduce measures to liberalize foreign trade between 1816 and 1819. The experiment did not go too well, and in 1821, the Tsarist government reversed course and returned to a protectionist stance. Storch's tutorship of the future Tsar Nicholas I was apparently unsuccessful - despite Storch's attempt to instill liberal principles in the future autocrat, Nicholas seemed to discard them after ascending to the throne in 1825.
Major Works of Heinrich Storch
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