Fundamental Uncertainty and Ambiguity

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to go beyond dichotomic taxonomies of the concept of uncertainty. It argues for the need to distinguish between at least two types of situation that have been opposed to what neoclassical economics deals with under the rubric of uncertainty or risk. These situations are associated with the concepts of, respectively, ambiguity and fundamental uncertainty. It is also argued that Keynes refers both to situations of ambiguity and of fundamental uncertainty in his several writings, without explicitly distinguishing between them. Finally, the paper also discusses whether ambiguity and fundamental uncertainty come in (ordinal) degrees.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 185 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.