Books

First edition of Knight's classic treatise. Octavo, bound in full morocco, gilt titles to the spine, raised bands, gilt ruled to the front and rear panels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In near fine condition. First editions are scarce. In economics, "Knightian uncertainty" is risk that is immeasurable, impossible to calculate. Knightian uncertainty is named after University of Chicago economist Frank Knight (1885-1972), who distinguished risk and uncertainty in his work "Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit": "Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated. The essential fact is that 'risk' means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the bearings of the phenomena depending on which of the two is really present and operating. It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all.".

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, written by Frank H. Knight, is a landmark in economic literature that introduces the distinction between risk, which can be measured and quantified, and uncertainty, which cannot.