Scientific principles of risk research as an economic category

The article systematizes the scientific principles of risk research as an economic science and defines the main provisions of risk theory at each stage of its development. It is emphasized that risk is an interdisciplinary economic category, since the phenomenon of uncertainty and risky decisions covers various areas of activity, in particular economics, management, sociology, psychology, ecology, law and other fields. It is concluded that an interdisciplinary approach allows for a comprehensive study of the economic nature of risk, which provides a deeper understanding and development of rational approaches to its assessment and management. The stages of risk evolution theories are determined and the scientific principles of the category of “risk” are summarized based on the study of theoretical and methodological approaches of foreign and domestic scientists. It is argued that the change in the stages of development of risk theory occurred under the influence of the socio-economic conditions dynamics of business structures functioning, the results of scientific research, the complication of commodity-monetary relations, the development of quantitative methods in the study of economic systems and phenomena, the methods development for assessing the behavior of business entities and qualitative assessment of risk in numerical values. The scientific ideas and views of scientists on the essence of the risk economic category are summarized, on the basis of which the historical stages of its development are supplemented by pre-classical and integrated. It is substantiated that the prerequisites for the transition from one stage of development of risk theory to another are: the complication of commodity-monetary relations, the development and introduction of quantitative methods in the study of economic phenomena and processes, the quantification of qualitative phenomena and processes. It is established that in the economic literature there is no single approach to understanding risk and there is no universal concept of the phenomenon under study, which is associated with its complexity and multifacetedness. The author’s definition of the risk category is proposed, the peculiarity of which is the probabilistic nature of the event occurrence, losses and new opportunities, as well as the absence of a statement about the a priori awareness of the risk by the business entity. The scientific and theoretical provisions of the risk theory are systematized, namely: risk is an economic and managerial category; risk is an event that affects or may affect the planned result; the consequences of risk can be both negative and positive results, and not only financial; risk management is the choice of an alternative solution; the ability to predict risk. Key words: risk, uncertainty, business risk, risk management, new opportunities, losses.