Abstract
A founder of the Chicago School, Frank Knight in his 1921 classic text Risk, Uncertainty and Profit defined perfect competition and distinguished risk from uncertainty in that under uncertainty the probability of events was unknowable. He criticized Pigou’s proposal that increasing-cost industries should be taxed. His work on capital theory refuted Böhm-Bawerk’s use of the period of production concept. Yet he conceived of economics as applying to only a small part of human activity; he criticized competitive enterprise as intrinsically unethical and unfair and debasing in practice, and feared freedom would be undermined by increasing monopoly and income inequality.
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Bibliography
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Stigler, G.J. (2018). Knight, Frank Hyneman (1885–1962). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1206
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1206
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