Journal Article Note on Dr. Lange's Interest Theory Get access Frank H. Knight Frank H. Knight Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 4, Issue 3, June 1937, Pages 223–230, https://doi.org/10.2307/2967457 Published: 01 June 1937

Journal Article Is Group Choice a Part of Economics? Comment Get access Frank H. Knight Frank H. Knight University of Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 67, Issue 4, November 1953, Pages 605–609, https://doi.org/10.2307/1883605 Published: 01 November 1953

Altho Mr. K. E. Boulding repudiates superficial features of the "Austrian" theory of capital as a matter of a production or investment period, there is danger that his clever mathematical treatment of the single investment in terms of time may lend support to such a position. Examination of the Austrian theory; its main fallacy lies in attributing production of capital goods to "primary" factors, in ignoring organic cooperation of all productive agencies, and in the fact that all are like capital goods in essential respects, 40.— Examination of Mr. Boulding's analogies of population and of lake and stream shows both faulty, 52.— Relations between two views of capital, as continuous or as cyclically produced, consumed and reproduced; necessity of preferring the continuity view, 63.— Basis of production period fallacies is in a confusion of things with values; value production is always instantaneous; it is impossible to treat the production of new capital as the production of its income yield thru future time, which would make the "period" infinite, 64.

The basic difficulty in economic theory is the philosophical problem of the meaning of explanation in connection with human behavior. I. Motive or desire in human conduct is the analogue of force in mechanics, 375. II. Is force real or merely symbolic, leaving movement (behavior in the case of human beings) the only fact open to description or study? 379. — This question is merely formal in physics, for we know forces by their effects alone, and hence unambiguously if at all; but in the realm of conduct, we know motives in ourselves directly and in others by communication, in addition to inferring them from observed behavior, and the two sources of information disagree considerably. III–IV. The intellectually embarrassing but unescapable fact of purposiveness, in thought as well as conduct, 386. — V. The place of motives and their treatment in economics, which has to be critical as well as descriptive and logical, — a branch of esthetics and ethics as well as of science, 400. — VI. The objective of economic activity and the point of view of social criticism of the economic order, 406.

Journal Article On Decreasing Cost and Comparative Cost: A Rejoinder Get access Frank H. Knight Frank H. Knight The University of Iowa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 39, Issue 2, February 1925, Pages 331–333, https://doi.org/10.2307/1884880 Published: 01 February 1925

The Ethics of Competition is a book of Frank H. Knight's writings on a common theme: the problem of social control and its various implications. Knight believed in free economic institutions but was also aware that the competitive economic system could be improved. One of the central figures of neoclassical economics in the twentieth century, Knight pursued a lifelong campaign against irrationalities of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and group conflict, while conceding that these were fundamental orientations of human action that might yet frustrate his own work as an economist. While Knight vigorously defended human freedom and the liberal order, he also was sufficiently moved by the shortcomings of liberalism as to condemn it as rife with abuse.As Richard Boyd writes in the new introduction, The Ethics of Competition is nothing short of visionary. Knight foresaw virtually all of the reductionistic tendencies that have come to plague the discipline he cultivated, neoclassical economic theory. Even more impressively, Knight related these disciplinary proclivities back to themes as grand as the fate of liberal democracy and human nature. Boyd discusses Knight's belief that the human craving for simple, mechanical explanations inevitably leads to frustration rather than material satisfaction. Chapters in The Ethics of Competition include "Economic Psychology and the Value Problem," "The Limitations of Scientific Method in Economics," "Marginal Utility Economics," "Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost," and "Economic Theory and Nationalism." This volume will be of essential value to economists, political theorists, philosophers, and sociologists.

Bearing on problem of scope and method, 454. — Both economics and ethics deal with value, 454. — Economics as a pure science has given too little attention to separation of constants from variables, 455. — Sense in which wants can be considered as data, 455. — Economic interpretation as a theory of conduct, 459. — Are human motives predominantly economic, 460. — Are they predominantly instinctive, 466. The adaptation theory, 469. — The pleasure theory, 469. — Economics as a study of the adaptation of means to ends, 472. — What becomes of ethics, 476. — Three kinds of treatment of conduct, 481.