Production is a complex system of interdependent activities, necessary to the system as a whole, which itself depends on the continuance of each individual activity that composes it. In such a system, resources must be committed to specific technological purposes long in advance to the ultimate sale of goods to the consumer.

The success of such an enterprise system rests on the durability of the instruments it uses. These are so complex, sensitive, and powerful that their huge expense can be recovered only if they can be used for many years. Yet when the decision is made to invest in them, those years of use are in the future and the conditioning circumstances are unobservable and unknown.

The firm in Western economies is the essential institutional means of confronting this problem of uncertainty, "Expectation, Enterprise and Profit: The Theory of the Firm" is concerned with the nature and mode of life of the firm as a means of policy formation in the face of uncertainty.

This book offers a concise treatment and excellent analysis of the major concepts studied in a first course in the theory of the firm.

"G. L. S. Shackle" (1903-1992) was Brunner Professor of Economic Science at the University of Liverpool and was widely known for a succession of major contributions to economic studies, including "Expectation in Economics, Economics for Pleasure, A Scheme of Economic Theory," and "The Years of High Theory."

It is Shackle's view that human conduct is chosen with a view to its consequences. But these are in the future, which cannot be directly known. Expectation will confine itself to what is deemed possible, but this leaves it free to entertain widely diverse and rival hypotheses. How can such skeins of mutually conflicting ideas serve the formation of individual or institutional policy? This is the chief question this book examines.

Production is a complex system of interdependent activities, necessary to the system as a whole, which itself depends on the continuance of each individual activity that composes it. In such a system, resources must be committed to specific technological purposes long in advance to the ultimate sale of goods to the consumer. The success of such an enterprise system rests on the durability of the instruments it uses. These are so complex, sensitive, and powerful that their huge expense can be recovered only if they can be used for many years. Yet when the decision is made to invest in them, those years of use are in the future and the conditioning circumstances are unobservable and unknown. The firm in Western economies is the essential institutional means of confronting this problem of uncertainty, Expectation, Enterprise and Profit: The Theory of the Firm is concerned with the nature and mode of life of the firm as a means of policy formation in the face of uncertainty. This book offers a concise treatment and excellent analysis of the major concepts studied in a first course in the theory of the firm.

It is Shackle's view that human conduct is chosen with a view to its consequences. But these are in the future, which cannot be directly known. Expectation will confine itself to what is deemed possible, but this leaves it free to entertain widely diverse and rival hypotheses. How can such skeins of mutually conflicting ideas serve the formation of individual or institutional policy? This is the chief question this book examines.

Economics is as wholly entangled with time as is history. It is within this framework that Professor Shackle takes a critical look at business decisions and in so doing brings the philosophical problems right into the market place.

First published in 1952, as the second edition of a 1949 original, this book contains a discussion of the role of expectation in relation to the workings of the economy. For the purposes of the discussion, expectation is defined as the act of creating imaginary situations, of associating them with named future dates, and of assigning to each of the hypotheses thus formed a place on a scale measuring the degree of belief that a specified course of action will make this hypothesis come true. The text also contains appendices and a detailed index. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in economic theory and methods of dealing with economic uncertainty.

This book is a collection of some of Professor Shackle's papers written between 1939 and 1953 is largely concerned with the problems of 'expectation' and 'uncertainty' and with reducing these universal factors to some sort of plausible rules. Also included are essays on interest rates, on investment and employment, and on the philosophy of economics. This book, by one of the finest economic writers of his time, will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of economics.

Originally published in 1969, the second edition of Professor Shackle's book has a fresh preface, an extra chapter and a number of additions to its bibliography. The extra chapter is concerned with the point at which one would decide to abandon an old policy and replace it with a new one. It is, in the words of the author, a further, rather radical development of the Stockholm sequence analysis. Professor Shackle examines how a decision can be rational only in a special sense, that of exploiting to the best present effect, on the decision-maker's state of mind, the scope afforded to imagination by what is known and by the gaps in that knowledge. The attempt made in this book to provide a theory of such decision has been called 'an existentialist economics'.

This book is unusual in several ways, most obviously because it is written along the lines of a Greek dialogue. It contains a great deal of highly condensed economic theory conveyed by means of a series of questions and answers, Professor Shackle aims questions at the undefended sectors of the economist's fortress, and presents in this form an extremely condensed version of a mass of accepted economic insights. The result is an introduction to economic theory which it is a pleasure to read. The questions which Professor Shackle asks are provocative and serve to focus the reader's attention. Professor Shackle strikes a happy balance between adopting a broad approach and providing instruction in basic economic concepts. His emphasis on the psychology of the individual decision maker and the innate uncertainties of the economic system provides the student with a much more mature view than most expositions.

By their nature and purpose different economic theories make almost opposite assumptions and use entirely different conceptions or aspects of time. These contrasting assumptions, which occur frequently, are essential to the nature of the various theories and cannot therefore be combined into a general theory. Coherence can only be obtained by an explicit scheme in which these theories are ordered to each other. In this book Professor Shackle seeks a single, unified and coherent basis which would serve for all economic theories, particularly in regard to their treatment of time and to the possibility of acquiring the knowledge on which these theories are based. Professor Shackle's examination of these theories and models will be of interest to economists attempting to find coherence in the diversity of economic theory.

Professor Shackle (1903 1992) was best known for his extensive and scholarly work on the theory of the making of business decisions in conditions of uncertainty. He also made important contributions to the theory of rates of interest and showed an exceptional ability to combine theoretical work with a practical understanding of the business world. Professor Shackle believed that economics is not pure logic but is part of the endeavour to describe the integral nature of man. Originally published in 1966, this volume contains a collection of his articles, all concerned in some way to show his approach to economic thought.

Even a decade after the end of the 1914 1918 war, economic theory assumed that the world was tranquil and orderly. By 1939 an economic slump without parallel, allied to the re-emergence of military ambition in Europe, had brought economic theorists face to face with reality. In this classic book, first published in 1967, Professor Shackle provides a study, in exact and professional language, of the precise nature, structure, presuppositions, language and inter-relations of the theories which were formulated in these fourteen years - unparalleled in the whole history of economics except perhaps by the years of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith. These theories are not prototypes on the way to something better but are of essential and permanent importance.

The language and theory of economics is very much a part of our lives; yet most of us know little of the meaning of 'inflation', 'productivity' or 'balance of payments', or of the workings of the bank rate or a national monetary policy. The problem is to bridge the gulf between the economist on the one side and the businessman, the banker, the politician, the journalist and the ordinary man on the other. Professor Shackle has provided the solution. In his book the first part of each chapter presents a familiar situation typifying some aspects of economic theory, the second comments on it and introduces and explains the relevant technical terms. This 1968 edition has two additional chapters: one on input-output analysis and activity analysis, the other giving an account of the theory of growth originated by Sir Roy Harrod.

G.L.S. Shackle made numerous, pioneering contributions to the study of uncertainty in economic life. This volume studies the production process, where resources must be committed to specific technological purposes long in advance of the ultimate sale of goods to the consumer. The problems of such a system rest on the durability of the instruments it uses, whose huge expense can only be recouped if they can be used for many years. Yet at the time of investment, those years of use are in the future and uncertain.
The firm is the essential institutional means of confronting this uncertainty. Expectation, Enterprise and Profit is concerned with the nature and mode of life of the firm as a means of policy formation in the face of uncertainty.
Chapters include:
The Nature and Matrix of Production, Investment and Expectation, Interdependent Decision-Making and Profit and Equilibrium.