Prepping for two Zoom-talks to audiences overseas
Handy not having to fly-to-talk but I certainly miss meeting and listening to others.
New chapter on ‘alternative theories of the firm’ through page-proofs.
But mostly reviewing some recent substantial advances on the ‘theory of the firm’ provoked by recent papers on the Centennial of Risk, Uncertainty and Profit.
Why is Knight so foundational these days? Because we are gradually accepting the anti-positivist notion that it is the conjunction of uncertainty (knowledge-absence) rather than knowing (knowledge-presence) that lies at the core of everything worth saying. Indeed Knight, a virulent anti-positivist in spite of his otherwise reputation, appreciated there is no ‘knowing’ without ‘uncertainty’. Neither term means anything to the omniscient. Thus economics is less an exercise in knowing, maximizing the value of scarce resources, than a study of how to inhabit the real-world’s economic sphere of life, a particularly social mode of uncertainty. Hence Jacob Viner’s ‘economics is what economists do’ is more pertinent. But what did he mean?
For weeks was immersed in the Academy’s archives (virtually of course). So much interesting stuff yet to be commented. What have we achieved? What did we hope to achieve?