Social Needs, Social Goods, and Human Associations in the Second Edition of Carl Menger’s Principles

This article deals with the contents of the second edition of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics (1923), which was neither reprinted in German by Hayek in 1934 nor translated into English by Knight in 1950. My aim is to show that a new Mengerian economic agent can be found in the contents of chapter 1, where Menger dealt with social needs and social goods. I consider this specific contribution of Menger a natural development of his methodological research on the nature of institutions. Finally, I contextualize the story of the missed reprint and translation in the debate about the meaning of economics involving Hayek and Robbins at the LSE and Knight in Chicago.