What Can We Learn about Frank Knight’s Economic Theory from the Prefaces to the Reprints of Risk, Uncertainty and Profit?

Abstract

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 of the book, but he did write a series of prefaces for its reprint editions by the LSE as well as for three foreign language editions. These prefaces both reflect the living legacy of Risk, Uncertainty and Profit in the teaching of economics as well as summarizing the changes in his views on economic method, theory and social philosophy. As he said in the final reprint, by the 1950s, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit itself had become “an introduction to the prefaces almost as much as the converse is the case.”