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Subject:
From:
Carlo Zappia <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 5 Feb 2015 14:37:46 -0500
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In the 1940s and early 1950s extensive reference to uncertainty in Knight's
sense is made by Arrow, Hart and Marschak, but the closest espression to
Knightian uncertainty I could find in the essays I checked is the following:
"In brief, Knight's uncertainties seem to have surprisingly
many of the properties of ordinary probabilities, and it is not clear how
much is gained by the distinction" (Arrow, Econometrica, 1951, p. 417).
As for Shackle, it would be interesting to have a more detailed reference,
since he refers to Knight neither in Expectation in Economics (1949)(if not
through Marschak) nor in the essays collected in Uncertainty in Economics
(1955).
Best regards, Carlo Zappia

On Wed, 4 Feb 2015 11:24:32 +0000, Zrinka Mendas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hello
>
>I wrote a working paper during my PhD on Knightian uncertainty and I
>referred to *Shackle G. L. S. (1954). *
>
>Regards
>
>Zrinka
>
>On 3 February 2015 at 15:49, Ross Emmett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I have been trying to track the earliest uses of the term "Knightian
>> uncertainty."
>>
>> To be clear: I am not trying to learn what Knight meant by uncertainty, or
>> what others made of Knight's term. I am interested in when the expression
>> "Knightian uncertainty" was first used, and in what context.
>>
>> Google and NGram searches suggest that the first use was in Nicholas
>> Georgescu-Roegen's "The Nature of Expectation and Uncertainty," in
*Expectations,
>> Uncertainty, and Business Behavior*, edited by Mary Jean Bowman (New
>> York: Social Science Research Council, 1958), p. 25. The conference from
>> which the book was drawn was held at the Carnegie Institute of Technology
>> in October 1955.
>>
>> JSTOR's first recorded use was in 1964, in an article in the *QJE* by F.
>> M. Scherer.
>>
>> My question: does anyone know of a use of the term "Knightian uncertainty"
>> that pre-dates Georgescu-Roegen's use in 1955?
>>
>> Ross Emmett
>>
>

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