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The major work of the greatest nineteenth century German classical economist, later acknowledge by Alfred Marshall and F.Y. Edgeworth as a highly significant work of proto-marginalist economics.

The Grundriss has been described as ‘a comprehensive but highly compressed work, which stands out not only for its path-breaking discussion of price formation but also for its liberal use of geometric diagrams, including the Marshallian cross of demand and supply’ (Blaug). ‘Like Cournot (earlier) and Marshall (later) Mangoldt uses a novel apparatus of partial analysis–Frisch’s microanalysis–to expound originally a mathematical theory of prices that goes far beyond Cournot. He describes in a very modern way the process from one equilibrium to another, analyses multiple equilibria and explains joint supplies and demands, a concept which Marshall would take up later on. Further, he has deeply influenced our theories of profit and rent by interpreting the entrepreneurial gain as rents of differential ability. Indeed, Mangoldt definitely anticipates Schumpeter’s theory of the entrepreneur. He clearly distinguishes profit as an independent category of income from interest (of the capitalist), by stressing different elements of gain such as the compensation for risk-bearing or for new goods or techniques of production and sale’ (New Palgrave).

Mangoldt ‘ranks among those pioneers in Germany, like von Thünen, von Buquoy, von Hermann, Gossen and Launhardt, who applied formal analysis to explain economic phenomena. Yet the predominant influence of the Historical School diminished the impact of his methods and ideas on German university economists. He shared this fate with Cournot and Walras’ (New Palgrave).