This book introduces the economic theories that have placed uncertainty at the core of economic discourse. Covering the works of John Maynard Keynes and Frank Knight, as well as those of John von Neumann, Oskar Morgenstern, and Leonard Savage, it reconstructs the complex history of how economists have analyzed uncertainty, as distinct from risk, in the twentieth century. The text delves into the question of the extent to which uncertainty is a measurable entity, focusing on the perspective of those authors who have attempted to demonstrate its irreducibility to risk, with particular regard to Daniel Ellsberg and the ensuing current decision theory. The book will appeal to scholars of the history of economic thought, as well as students of advanced microeconomics, decision theory, game theory, and history of economic thought.
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Art of Conjecture: Probability and Utility.- Chapter 3. Uncertainty According to Knight and Keynes.- Chapter 4. Von Neumann, Morgenstern and Decision-making under Risk.- Chapter 5. Ramsey, de Finetti and Savage: Decisions under Uncertainty.- Chapter 6. Uncertainty as Ambiguity: Ellsberg and the Paradoxes of Decision Theory of choice.- Chapter 7. Modern Uncertainty Theories and the Return to Keynes.
Carlo Zappia is an Associate Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University of Siena, where he teaches microeconomics and the history of economics. He has also been a Shackle Visiting Fellow at St. Edmund's College, University of Cambridge (UK), and a Visiting Fellow at the Université Côte d'Azur. He is currently Chairman of the Council of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought.
Zappia s book is a useful book for understanding that uncertainty has deep roots historical and theoretical in probability and utility. (Anna Carabelli, OEconomia, Vol. 15 (3), 2025)
