
Georg Friedrich List was a leading 19th-century German economist who developed the "National System" or what some would call today the National System of Innovation. He was a forefather of the German historical school of economics, and considered the original European unity theorist whose ideas were the basis for the European Economic Community.
List's principal work is entitled Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (1841) and was translated into English as The National System of Political Economy. Before 1914, List and Marx were the two best-known German economists and theorists of development.