Search results for "Frank H"
showing 5 items of 5 documents
John M. Clark and frank H. Knight on the adding-up theorem, overhead costs, and more
2018
This note offers new archival insight into a 1925 polemical exchange between Frank Knight and John Maurice Clark that was hosted in the pages of Journal of Political Economy. Although the exchange centered on the effects of overhead costs on marginal productivity theory and the so-called adding-up theorem, it also provided significant elements to assess the methodological differences between two of the most representative American economists of the interwar years.
Frank H. Knight, pragmatism, and American institutionalism: A note
2009
This note deals with the debated question of whether, and to what extent, Frank Knight's epistemology was consistent with the general philosophy of American pragmatism. First, in accord with recent interpretations, I provide new evidence illustrating that Knight's views on science, knowledge and related philosophical topics present some important similarities with the pragmatic tradition. Second, I attempt to demonstrate that Knight's unsympathetic reading of Dewy and pragmatism was, to a relevant extent, a consequence of his aversion to the so-called scientific wing of American interwar institutionalism. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.
Frank H. Knight on social values in economic consumption: an archival note
2020
We reproduce an unpublished address on “Social Values in Economic Consumption” which Knight prepared for a SSRC Conference in June 1931. This material sheds new light on Knight in two respects. First, anticipating what is known as the relative income hypothesis, Knight indicated that a general increase in income, not only leaves the individual’s relative position in society unaltered but makes her/his situation worse off due to the peculiar characteristics of the market for “personal services.” Second, this address provides further evidence of how, in spite of some substantial methodological differences, Knight’s research interests converged with those of the institutionalists.
Two minds that never met: Frank H. knight on john M. keynes once again — A documentary note
2016
This note presents new archival evidence about Frank H. Knight’s views on John M. Keynes. The relevant material is composed of a series of lecture notes taken by Perham C. Nahl in Frank H. Knight’s course on Business Cycles at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1936. It emerges from the notes that the methodological gap between Keynes and Knight was irreducible, which explains the harsh tone of Knight’s published review of The General Theory. Connected to this is Knight’s strenuous defense of the ‘postulates of classical political economy’ as criticized by Keynes in chapter 2 of his book, an argument that was better expounded in the classroom than in the review. However…
“A certain amount of ‘recantation’”: On the origins of Frank H. Knight’s antipositivism
2016
The aim of this paper is to investigate in some detail the origins of Knight’s antipositism and to assess the main influences that brought him to a change in methodological perspective after 1921. As importantly, what follows is also an attempt to increase our general understanding of the methodological debates taking place during the early decades of the last century and to shed new light on the inherently pluralistic character of US interwar economics. This paper is organized as follows: the first section outlines Knight’s methodological views as presented in his early works; the second section discusses Knight’s “recantation” and his attack on behavioristic social science; the third sect…