Knight, Frank Hyneman

Knight, Frank Hyneman, 1885–1972, American economist, b. McLean County, Ill., Ph.D. Cornell Univ., 1916. He taught economics at the Univ. of Chicago (1927–62). Knight's most influential work was his first book, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), in which he described the relationship between profits and risk in a free market economy. He distinguished insurable risk from uninsurable risk, contending that the latter produced profits. His methodology was the foundation of the Chicago school of economics, which held that competition in a free market economy was the best method for achieving economic health.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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