A Quote by Martin Shubik

There is a history of mathematical models of oligopolistic competition dating from Cournot to the theory of games. There is also a literature generated by institutional economists, lawyers, and administrators interested in formulating and implementing public policy. It has been the tendency of these groups to work almost as though the other did not exist.

Martin Shubik

Quote Topics

Administrators Almost Also Been Competition Dating Did Economists Exist Games Groups History Implementing Institutional Interested Lawyers Literature Mathematical Mathematical Models Models Other Policy Public Public Policy Tendency Theory Though Work

Quote Author

Martin Shubik
American - Economist
Born: March 24, 1926

After preliminary work by a number of other distinguished mathematicians and economists, game theory as a systematic theory started with von Neumann and Morgenstern's book, 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,' published in 1944.

John Harsanyi

As a general rule, the United States government is run by lawyers who occasionally take advice from economists. Others interested in helping the lawyers out need not apply.

Richard Thaler

If the system exhibits a structure which can be represented by a mathematical equivalent, called a mathematical model, and if the objective can be also so quantified, then some computational method may be evolved for choosing the best schedule of actions among alternatives. Such use of mathematical models is termed mathematical programming.

George Dantzig

In America, much foreign policy seems contrived to be an exercise in political theory with no attention to history whatsoever. Yet there's a great reverence for history - though it's history as thumb-sucking, security blanket-nibbling self-congratulation.

Simon Schama

We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning--of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy.

Nicolae Ceausescu

The ethical practices of lawyers are probably no worse than those of other professions. Lawyers bring some of the trouble on by claiming in a sanctimonious way that they are interested only in justice, not power or wealth. They also suffer guilt by association. Their clients are often people in trouble. Saints need no lawyers: gangsters do.

Lawrence M. Friedman

One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?

Stephen Hawking

Economists are people who wonder if what works in reality can also work in theory.

Ronald Reagan

The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economists sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups

Henry Hazlitt

Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.

Rachel Maddow

In short, competition has to shoulder the responsibility of explaining all the meaningless ideas of the economists, whereas it should rather be the economists who explain competition.

Karl Marx

String theory has had a long and wonderful history. It originated as a technique to try to understand the strong force. It was a calculational mechanism, a way of approaching a mathematical problem that was too difficult, and it was a promising way, but it was only a technique. It was a mathematical technique rather than a theory in itself.

Sheldon Lee Glashow

In the 1940s, economics started getting highly mathematical. It was basically because economists weren't smart enough to write down models of real behavior that they started writing down models of highly rational behavior - and they kind of forgot about humans.

Richard Thaler

Well, gauge theory is very fundamental to our understanding of physical forces these days. But they are also dependent on a mathematical idea, which has been around for longer than gauge theory has.

Roger Penrose

This is probably going to surprise people, but if you were to do a scan around the globe on public policy concerning our industry, you would probably have to conclude that the United States has the policy that has been, I believe, the most pro competition.