The Frank Knight Lecture is an annual scholarly event named in honor of Cornell's most esteemed Ph.D. student in Economics. Knight was a pioneer in the study of uncertainty and entrepreneurship, and was one of the most important economists of the 20th century. This annual lecture is traditionally open to the Economics department faculty, field faculty, and graduate students.
Frank H. Knight:
"Frank H. Knight received his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell in 1916 and served as an instructor from 1917-1918. " Knight is one of history’s most influential economists and spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became a co-founder of the famous Chicago school (with Jacob Viner). Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman, George Stigler and James M. Buchanan were all students of Knight at Chicago."
"Knight made his reputation with his book Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, which was based on his Ph.D. dissertation. In it, Knight set out to explain why “perfect competition” would not necessarily eliminate profits. His explanation was “uncertainty,” which Knight distinguished from risk. According to Knight, “risk” refers to a situation in which the probability of an outcome can be determined, and therefore the outcome insured against. “Uncertainty,” by contrast, refers to an event whose probability cannot be known. Knight argued that even in long-run equilibrium, entrepreneurs would earn profits as a return for putting up with uncertainty. Knight’s distinction between risk and uncertainty is still taught in economics classes today." Few economists have achieved Knight’s pedagogic impact. Each spring, the Cornell Economics Department honors Knight with the Frank H. Knight Lectureship.
Future Lecture:
Ed Glaeser
Harvard University
May 4th, 2026
Edward L. Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught economic theory and urban economics since 1992. He also leads the Urban Economics Working Group at the National Bureau of Economics Research, co-leads the Cities Programme of the International Growth Centre, and co-edits the Journal of Urban Economics. He has written hundreds of papers on cities, infrastructure and other topics, and written, co-written and co-edited many books including Triumph of the City, Survival of the City (with David Cutler) and Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe: A World of Difference (with Alberto Alesina). He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Chair of Harvard’s Economics Department. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Econometric Society, and he received the Albert O. Hirschman prize from the Social Science Research Council. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1992.
(https://glaeser.scholars.harvard.edu/)
Past Knight Lecturers:
Ulrike Malmendier
University of California, Berkeley
April 22, 2025
Dr. Parag Pathak
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Improving Opportunities For Public Education: Recent Lessons From Urban School Reform"
April 12, 2016
Dr. Roger Koenker
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Risk, Uncertainty and the Pessimistic Portfolio"
March 24, 2015
Dr. Liran Einav
Stanford University
"Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard in Health Insurance"
September 10, 2013
Dr. Andrew Chesher
University College London
"Incomplete Models of Ambiguity in Economics"
March 7, 2013
Dr. James J. Heckman
University of Chicago
"Hard Evidence on Soft Skills"
April 26, 2012
Dr. Thomas Sargent
New York University
"Knightian Uncertainty in Macroeconomics"
April 11, 2011
Dr. Roger Myerson
Univerisity of Chicago
2007 Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
"Understanding the Foundations of Institutions: Moral Hazard in High Office"
December 4, 2009