Statistics
Laspeyres is mainly known today for the index number formula for determining the price increase, which he developed in 1871 and which, usually combined with Paasche’s, is still in use all over the world (Laspeyres, 1871; the best short summary in Rinne 1983, p.
661; more extensively 1981, pp. 206209; especially accessible, 1984, pp. 56-61). Other than that, he may count as a father of business administration as an academic-professional discipline in Germany (see Rinne 1983, p. 660; 1981, p. 200), and as one of the main unifiers of economics and statistics by ‘developing ideas which are today by and large nationally and internationally reality: quantification and operationalization of economics; expansion of official statistics; cooperation of official statistics and economic research; and integration of the economist and the statistician in one person’ (Rinne 1983, p. 660; see Laspeyres 1875, pp. 10, 17-18).One may even go so far as to say that Laspeyres was one of the leading economists to establish statistics as a key branch of economics as a scholarly discipline (see Stieda 1921, p. 221). For Laspeyres, this was a realism issue - it is, after all, the realist method that needs statistics, not the mathematical- modelling one, where data only disturb the model (see Lexis 1910, p. 244). Laspeyres’ main point was that any critique of standard economics would have to be founded on clear results (1875, pp. 8-10). What should be noticed in the law and economics context especially, and what is hardly ever noted when the Laspeyres index number formula is mentioned, is that Laspeyres’ point with the formula, the reason why he critiqued an earlier model and substituted it with his own, is that by doing so, one obtains better statistics on the real situation.
Law and economics being as it is a form of economic realism - a concern with what results a law really has, rather than is supposed to have - Laspeyres' first key contribution to the economics of his time, especially to the emerging specifically continental school of Kathedersozialismus and hence to the law and economics tradition that this school forms as well, is the strong emphasis on statistics, correctly gathered and correctly processed, as a necessary basis for any statement concerned with reality.