ABSTRACT
Our discussion in the preceding chapters on growth in a many-product economy has shown the great importance of knowing how to deal with the problem of uncertainty about future developments. It is, as we have seen, impossible to plan today's activities without reference to the prices at which today's output will sell tomorrow, these prices being themselves in part determined by what people tomorrow expect the next day's prices to be—and so on into the indefinite future. Thus risk and uncertainty is an essential feature of our present model of economic growth. In the next chapter we will discuss some ways in which risks and uncertainties may be reduced; but, as we shall see then, great risk and uncertainty is nevertheless bound to remain. In this chapter we intend to discuss two matters which are bound to arise from this inevitable existence of risk and uncertainyt.
