James M. Buchanan revisited his mentor's famous 1923 essay “The Ethics of Competition” in an essay written for the centenary celebration of Frank Knight's birth in 1985. Buchanan's paper focused on the first section of Knight's essay, and outlined why it provided an inadequate criticism of a...

Jim Buchanan kept pictures of Knut Wicksell and Frank H. Knight on his office wall. Yet a careful look at Buchanan's work indicates that it ran counter to that of Frank H. Knight. Knight and Buchanan disagreed on the methodological, economic, ethical, and political assumptions that drove their...

Once economics came to be understood as the scientific investigation of the operation of markets, economic theorists pushed ethical and metaphysical concerns outside their realm of study. After the separation, the claims of Christian theology had no more jurisdiction over the discipline of...

The methodological debate between Frank Knight and Terence Hutchison is usually framed in terms of the philosophical debates between positivism and intuitionism, or between empirical knowledge and theoretical knowledge. Hutchison’s The significance and basic postulates of economic theory was,...

Frank H. Knight's classic, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, became a standard textbook and reference for students at the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and elsewhere from the 1930s until at least the 1950s. Knight never published new or revised editions...

The libertarian defense of free enterprise, free trade, and freedom from government regulations and controls is grounded in a normative commitment to individual freedom. The majority of the economics profession, including the Chicago School, are committed in the first instance to methodological...

Paper presented at "The Legacy of Chicago Economics" conference at the Becker-Friedman Institute for Economic Research, The University of Chicago, October 5, 2015. A survey of Frank Knight's contribution to the Chicago School, and a consideration of how the School moved away from Knight's...

A genealogical investigation of Frank Knight's little textbook, lt;Igt;The Economic Organizationlt;/Igt; (lt;Igt;EOlt;/Igt;), which has a history separate from, and perhaps even in tension with, its author. Where did this text come from? What is its history? What essays and manuscripts are its...

T. Robert Malthus is usually remembered for the “gloomy presentiments” of the population principle articulated in the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population. Less attention is given to the subsequent editions of the Essay, in which Malthus refined the principle, and...

Frank Knight's early life, including his family history, brothers in economics, early education, education at American University (Harriman, TN) and Milligan College, experience at the Jamestown Exposition, graduate study at Tennessee and Cornell. Clarifies his religious background, educational...