Frank Knight

Frank Hyneman Knight ( born November 7, 1885 McLean County, Illinois, † April 15, 1972 in Chicago) was an American economist. He is considered the founder of the Chicago school of economics.

Life

After various studies, he turns to Cornell University to economics. Under the heading "Risk, Uncertainty and Profit" he presents a thesis on the theory of profit of enterprise. For this purpose he performs the still valid distinction between risk and uncertainty in the economic theory. Risks can be calculated, while under conditions of uncertainty, no expected value can be specified. The economic function of the entrepreneur is accordingly to respond incalculable uncertainties (uncertainty ). Knight is laying the foundation for modern decision theory and provides the neoclassical theory of competition in their binding form dar.

After a brief stopover in Iowa Knight acts from 1928 until his death at the University of Chicago. In a few years he developed a key public figure within its faculty and counts as a father of the so-called Chicago school (along with Jacob Viner ).

Frank Knight has left the economic discipline a complex and multifaceted oeuvre: It ranges from contributions to capital theory, via micro - and macroeconomics to the methodology. Knight leads the English-speaking reader to the "Principles of Economics" Carl Menger, although it has a " naive economism " she juxtaposes with him. Knight transmits Max Weber's " economic history " and is laying in front of the first ever translation of a work of the German social scientist. However, the extent by most of his writings devoted to socio-philosophical issues such as equality, freedom, democracy, justice, ethics, and social reforms.

Knight was among other things a teacher of Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics and founder of monetarism.