Search results

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology is an annual research series which presents materials in two fields, both broadly considered: the history of economic thought and the methodology of economics.The annual A-volume contains peer-reviewed articles comparable to other academic journals in the history of economics, except that long pieces are welcome. The A-volume also publishes symposia, and review essays on new works in the history of economic thought, methodology and related fields (philosophy of science, sociology of science, rhetoric of science, and intellectual history), including multiple reviews of the same work.The annual B- and C-volumes are archival supplements that present previously unpublished materials -- lecture notes, papers, longer manuscripts, correspondence, etc.- of interest in both fields addressed in the A-vol.

The collection includes both refereed articles and review essays. The articles highlight research on the role of western economic advisors in China before the Communist Revolution (Paul Trescott), John Ryan on minimum wage legislation, a symposium on Clement Juglar, and a comparison of recent work in the history of economics and the history of science. Review essays on new publications examine a range of subjects, including: David Humes political economy; conceptions of economic morality in American thought; Frank Knight and the Austrians on institutions; Friedrich Engels; Austrian views on entrepreneurship; Coase and Pigou on government intervention; Hayek and conservatism; the history of the 'living wage' notion; methodological consideration of economics and econometrics; and Paul Heynes essays on economic and ethics.

part Section I Historical reconstruction in the history of economics -- chapter 1 Exegesis, hermeneutics, and interpretation -- chapter 2 Reflections on "breaking away": Economics as science and the history of economics as history of science -- part Section II Interpreting Frank Knight -- chapter 3 The therapeutic quality of Frank Knight's Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit -- chapter 4 The Economist and the Entrepreneur: Modernist impulses in Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit -- chapter 5 Frank Knight's dissent from Progressive social science -- chapter 6 "What is truth" in capital theory?: Five stories relevant to the evaluation of Frank Knight's contributions to the capital controversy -- chapter 7 Maximizers versus good sports: Frank Knight's curious understanding of exchange behavior -- chapter 8 Frank Knight on the conflict of values in economic life -- part Section III Interpreting Frank Knight and Chicago economics -- chapter 9 Frank Knight, Max Weber, Chicago economics, and institutionalism -- chapter 10 Entrenching disciplinary competence: The role of general education and graduate study in Chicago economics -- chapter 11 De gustibus est disputandum: Frank Knight's reply to George Stigler and Gary Becker's "De gustibus non est disputandum" with an introductory essay -- chapter 12 Did the Chicago School reject Frank Knight?: Assessing Frank Knight's place in the Chicago economics tradition -- part Section IV Economics, religion, and politics -- chapter 13 Frank Knight: Economics versus religion -- chapter 14 Is economics a religion? -- chapter 15 The idea of a secular society revisited.

AbstractThe last two chapters of Frank H. Knight's Risk, Uncertainty and Profit are seldom cited and frequently ignored. But in those chapters, Knight moves from entrepreneurial judgment and organizational strategies to meet the dilemmas uncertainty presents in a firm to the wider question of how uncertainty affects the social organization of economic activity. Ignoring the concluding chapters of Knight's book means we miss an important part of his early career thoughts on the tradeoffs between free enterprise and the social organization of economic activity. The purpose of the paper is to lay out the perspective on social economic organization that he took in the final two chapters of his first major work against the context of his other contemporary writings.