On January 29, 2021, five invited participants discussed their contributed essays drawing on their work on the political economy of risk and uncertainty, or what political theorists could learn from Knight. Essays presented at the symposium were published in the 2021 edition of the research annual "Research in the History of Economic Thought & Methodology."
In 1921, Houghton Mifflin published Frank H. Knight's "Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" under the terms of the Hart, Schaffner and Marx essay competition, in which Knight's dissertation had won second place back in 1917. Forty years later, the American Economic Association awarded Knight the Walker medal, awarded once every five years to honor the American economist who "made the greatest contribution to economics" throughout his career. "Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" was the foundation for that award, although Knight contributed much more.
At the center of Knight's book was a reformulation of classical price theory designed to set up the discipline for consideration of the contribution of price theory to the modern world of imperfect competition. The most important difference, Knight argued, between classical price theory and imperfect competition was the presence in the latter of uncertainty, which emerged from dynamic, and hence unpredictable, change. It was dynamic unpredictability that created the economic conditions for entrepreneurial action, and also for the formation of the corporation, in which ownership and management were separated in order (so they hoped) to reduce the firm's exposure to uncertainty. Both of these modern contexts required judgment, a human faculty uncalled for in perfect competition, where it was all calculation because everything was predictable. Uncertainty required judgment, not only about situations, but also about the capacity of others to make judgments in uncertain situations. Organization, therefore, emerged, both within firms and in social economic organization, as a means of coordinating judgments.
"Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" leaves us with the question of how (or perhaps, whether) our new social, economic and political organizations will maintain, in the presence of imperfect competition, what Philip Wicksteed once called "the immediate accomplishment of each other's purposes in order to secure the ultimate accomplishment of [our] own, irrespective of what those purposes of [our] own may be."
Agenda is tentative and subject to change.
Times are in local AZ MST (UTC-7).
Friday, January 29
7:45 a.m.— Introduction
8:00 a.m. — Session 1
- Per Bylund, Oklahoma State University
- Ali Khan, Johns Hopkins University with Edward Schlee, Arizona State University, and Aniruddha Ghosh, Johns Hopkins University
9:00 a.m. — Break
9:30 a.m. — Session 2
- Ross Emmett, Arizona State University
- Roni Hirsch, Harvard University
10:30 a.m. — Break
11:00 a.m. — Session 3
- Richard Wagner, George Mason University
11:30 a.m. — Conclusion Conversation on RUP
Noon — End
Why are you hosting the RUP Symposium virtually rather than in-person?
Due to the uncertainty of COVID-19 and for the safety of all attendees and students, we determined it was best to host a virtual symposium via Zoom rather than canceling.
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