Maurice Block

Maurice Block

Maurice Block (18 February 1816, Berlin - 1901; German: Moritz Block) was a German-French statistician and economist.

He was born in Berlin of Jewish parents. He studied at Bonn and Giessen, but settled in Paris, becoming naturalized there. In 1844 he entered the French ministry of agriculture, becoming in 1852 one of the heads of the statistical department. He retired in 1862, and thenceforth devoted himself entirely to statistical studies, which have gained for him a wide reputation. He was elected a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1880. He died in Paris on the 9th of January 1901.

His principal works are: Dictionnaire de l'administration francaise (1856); Statistique de la France (1860); Dictionnaire general de la politique (1862); L'Europe politique et sociale (1869); Traité theorique et pratique de statistique (1878); Les Progres de l'economie politique depuis Adam Smith (1890); he also edited from 1856 L'Annuaire de l'economie politique et de la statistique, and wrote in German Die Bevolkerung des franzosischen Kaiserreichs (1861); Die Bevalkerung Spaniens and Portugals (1860; and Die Machtstellung der europäischen Staaten (1862).

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