[Selections by Humberto Barreto for SHOE list.]
nep-hpe <http://nep.repec.org/nep-hpe.html> New Economics Papers
<http://nep.repec.org/> on History and Philosophy of Economics
Issue of 2023‒09‒04
one paper chosen by
Erik Thomson <http://econpapers.repec.org/RAS/pth72.htm>,
University of Manitoba <http://umanitoba.ca/>
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1. Frank Knight and the Problem of the Twentieth Century
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#m_-894642701976819693_p1> By Richard
N. Langlois
<http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/search.pf?aus=Richard%20N.%20Langlois>
------------------------------
1. Frank Knight and the Problem of the Twentieth Century
<http://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:uct:uconnp:2023-06>
By: Richard N. Langlois
<http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/search.pf?aus=Richard%20N.%20Langlois>
(University
of Connecticut)
Abstract: Much has been written, especially in economics and management,
about Frank Knight’s account of uncertainty and entrepreneurship. This
paper attempts to put that theory in the larger context of the intellectual
currents, and to a significant extent the economic history, in which Knight
found himself. In response to rapid economic growth and the emergence of
the large industrial enterprise in the U. S. in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, many came to believe that the classical
liberalism of the nineteenth century would need to be amended – if not
jettisoned entirely. Frank Knight was among these. He was, along some
dimensions, a Progressive and an Institutionalist. What set him apart from
Progressives like John Dewey, however, was his theory of economic
knowledge. Whereas Dewey and others insisted on the panacea of science as
the solution to the “social question, ” Knight understood that in a world
of uncertainty, the cognitive faculty of judgment was essential and
unavoidable, thus providing a new intellectual underpinning for many of the
institutions of nineteenth-century liberalism. Yet Knight did not follow
the implications of his theory of knowledge all the way to their
conclusions. This is because – perhaps among other reasons – he began with
a well-developed model of perfect competition, which, unlike such
contemporaries as Joseph Schumpeter and F. A. Hayek, he was never willing
to relinquish as a normative ideal. Perhaps surprisingly, Frank Knight was
a Progressive and an Institutionalist because he believed in the
neoclassical model of the economy.
Keywords: Frank Knight, uncertainty, entrepreneurship, liberalism,
democracy, central planning
JEL: B25 B3 B52 L2
<http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/search.pf?jel=B25%20B3%20B52%20L2>
Date: 2023–08
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2023-06&r=hpe
------------------------------
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