Frank Knight’s Proposal to End Distinctions Among Factors of Production and His Objection to the Single Tax Florenz Plassmann * Department of Economics, SUNY Binghamton Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA fplass@binghamton.edu T. Nicolaus Tideman Department of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA ntideman@vt.edu This version: January 20, 2003 Abstract: Frank Knight claimed that there are no economically interesting distinctions among factors of production, and he also strongly opposed Henry George’s proposal to implement a Single Tax on land value. We locate and examine the Single Tax in Knight’s framework of property rights and argue that Knight ignored an inefficiency in the original appropriation of land that occurs when competition is used to assign property rights in land. This inefficiency is visible only if land and capital are conceptually separated. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Codes: B13, B31. Keywords: Frank Knight, Single Tax, Property Rights. * Corresponding author. Phone: (607) 777-4303. Fax: (607) 777-2681. We are grateful to two anonymous referees for comments and suggestions.