Uncertainty in perspective: Building a comparative framework

Abstract

Motivation: Creating a framework to categorize and, by it, deduce assumptions about uncertainty in the work of economists, even when uncertainty isn’t explicitly stated. Using this framework on a similar base of authors, Davidson used it to create his taxonomy.
Aim: The primary aim of this article is to introduce a new tool for comparing different perspectives on uncertainty; the secondary aim is to categorize various viewpoints of chosen authors from Post Keynesian and Austrian school of Economics and infer implicit assumptions about uncertainty based on these categorizations.
Materials and methods: The methods employed in the article are integrative review, Davidson taxonomy, and a comparative framework called modified taxonomy. Materials consist of chosen works of economists from Post Keynesian and Hayek to replicate, to some extent, selection of authors from the original work of Davidson, which introduced his taxonomy.
Results: The analysis indicate that authors promoting decentralized solutions such as market perceive uncertainty as stemming from external to economy sources, whereas authors promoting more centralized solution (one that need some sort of guarantee) is seeking uncertainty from human’s ability to create future independent by autonomous decisions.