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The Origins of Frank Knight and the Chicago School in American Economics: Historical and Intellectua



While most economists now acknowledge Knight's distinction between risk and uncertainty, the distinction has not resulted in much theoretical modelling or empirical work. However, the Knightian concept of uncertainty has been recognized in a variety of works: John Maynard Keynes discussed it at length in his Treatise on Probability; Armen Alchian relied on it for discussing market behavior in his seminal paper Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory; Paul Davidson incorporated it as an essential element in the Post Keynesian school of economics he co-founded; and G.L.S. Shackle explored the methodological consequences of Knight's and Keynes's fundamental uncertainty in his Epistemics and Economics. A more model-oriented contribution is the "Markets from Networks" model developed by sociologist Harrison White from 2002.




Frank Knight and the Chicago School in American Economics




In this sense, then, Knight, like Schumpeter, carved a uniquepath in economics -- being claimed by many schools of thought as one of their own, withoutreally belonging to any. Unfortunately, also like Schumpeter,although he educated and influenced many students, Knight failed to acquire any followersand failed to build up a distinctive "school of thought" around himself. We can see some traces of his perspective in the work of Kenneth E. Boulding, Martin Bronfenbrenner, JamesM. Buchanan and George J. Stigler,but they can hardly be called "Knightians" in any meaningful sense.


Knight was born in southern Illinois in 1885, the first of 11 children. He attended several small Southern schools before enrolling at the University of Tennessee, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in two years. He then entered Cornell University in 1913. After a year in the philosophy department, he switched to economics because his professors decided that his extreme skepticism would be more profitably employed there. His economics dissertation—“A Theory of Business Profit,” completed in 1916— was revised and published in 1921 under the title Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. It has become a classic in the field.


Frank Hyneman Knight was born on November 7, 1885 in MacLean County, Illinois into a family of devoutly Christian farmers. He never completed high school but was admitted in 1905 to the American University in Tennessee. He graduated in 1911 from the Milligan College. At the University of Tennessee, he obtained a B.S. and an M.A. (the latter in German) in 1913. He then moved to Cornell University for doctoral studies. His initial subject of interest was philosophy, but he soon switched to economics. He studied with Alvin Johnson and Allyn Young, who both supervised the work on his dissertation, which was completed in 1916 under the title Cost, Value and Profit (later renamed into Risk, Uncertainty and Profit and published in 1921).


Knight carved his own unique path in economics, claimed by many schools of thought as one of their own, without really belonging to any. Unfortunately though, although he educated and influenced many students, he acquired no followers and thus failed to build up his own distinctive school of thought.


Frank Hyneman Knight was a prominent American economist and one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics. His books and articles were and continue to be significant contributions to the study and understanding of economics. In fact, he was dubbed one of the American saints in economics" because of his contributions.


The University of California has numbered many salty individualists among its faculty. M.M. (Melvin Moses) Knight must figure high among them. Born April 29, 1887 on a farm near Bloomington, Illinois, he was one of nine children. Three were to be distinguished economists, M.M. at Berkeley, Frank at the University of Chicago, and Bruce at Dartmouth. Life on the farm was not always easy. At age 13, M.M. found himself responsible for running the farm. A self-taught man, he never attended high school. For a time he worked as a locksmith and bicycle mechanic. He later showed skills as plumber and musician. At age 23 he managed to qualify for entrance into Milligan College, Tennessee. After two years, he transferred to the University of Tennessee, where he studied physics and economics. He took an A.B. at Texas Christian University in English in 1913, followed the next year by an M.A. in history. He studied for a while at the University of Chicago and finally earned a Ph.D. in sociology at Clark University in sociology, with a thesis, Taboo and Genetics. His studies continued at other institutions, including the New School for Social Research and the University of Paris in such fields as geology, geography, genetics, mathematics, and theology. Later his wide interdisciplinary interests showed up in his teaching and writing.


Dr. Israel Kirzner is a leading economist in the Austrian school. Kirzner's major work is in the economics of knowledge and entrepreneurship and the ethics of markets. He is a leading authority on Ludwig von Mises' thinking and methodology in economics and received the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research in 2006.


First, a terminological point. Simons' use of 'libertarian' is a bit confusing. It means, for him, in "the English-Continental sense" liberal (given that in the US context 'liberalism' became associated with the New Deal). In contemporary discourse he would be considered a bleeding heart libertarian. Either way, my interest in Simons (recall) is that he helped shape the Chicago school of economics in crucial fashion. And that he is one of the founding thinkers of the constitutive schools of twentieth century neo-liberalism, which was at the heart of what I call the second wave of liberalism (roughly 1945-2008).


Simons, who helps (recall for the complexity of this claim) originate the Chicago school of economics, was clearly not immune from reflections on world system. (The term is not indexed, although it's used again in the chapter.) The particular proposal is notable because it is explicitly designed to preserve and protect "small autonomous nations." This fits with Simons' broader understanding of liberalism, which is oriented toward devolution to the lowest political unit (preferably the provincial or local units (see "A Political Credo" in Economic Policy for a free Society, pp. 12-13)). Unlike some other liberals of the day, there seems to be no racial motive for this (but see below). 2ff7e9595c


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