A Quote by Robert Higgs

Nothing has done more to render modern economic theory a sterile and irrelevant exercise in autoeroticism than its practitioners’ obsession with mathematical, general-equilibrium models.

Robert Higgs

Quote Topics

Done Economic Economic Theory Equilibrium Exercise General Irrelevant Mathematical Models Modern More Nothing Obsession Render Sterile Than Theory

Quote Author

Robert Higgs
American - Economist
Born: February 1, 1944

I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium.

Gerard Debreu

Modern economics is a set of formal models and equations purporting to fully determine human behaviour, at least in the economic realm. And there is no way that uncertainty can be compressed into determinate mathematical models.

Murray Rothbard

There are some modern practitioners, who declaim against medical theory in general, not considering that to think is to theorize; and that no one can direct a method of cure to a person labouring under disease, without thinking, that is, without theorizing; and happy therefore is the patient, whose physician possesses the best theory.

Erasmus Darwin

Einstein's theory of General Relativity has a mathematical structure very similar to Yang-Mills theory.

Chen-Ning Yang

An old French mathematician said: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.

David Hilbert

The space you occupy and the authority you exercise may be measured with mathematical exactness by the service you render.

Napoleon Hill

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.

John Kenneth Galbraith

State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.

Ludwig von Mises

Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions.

Wassily Leontief

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

The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.

Raymond Geuss

There is nothing, under present conditions, that can be more easily and exactly reproduced than a technically good black-and-white photograph, and it is utter rot to burden those interested in them with irrelevant biographical trivia and pet longwinded theory.

Clarence John Laughlin

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

The concept of a general equilibrium has no relevance to the real world (in other words, classical economics is an exercise in futility).

George Soros

I'll probably take the prize for the most irrelevant degree. Although some of the things now where they study, you know: "post feministic colonial film theory" - those kind of majors, yeah, that's probably worse. But I was, you know, classics, Greek and Latin, like what's more irrelevant than dead languages, you know?

Robert Greene

In fashion, of course, the way that women are dressed now - and also a vision of the modern woman, the woman of today. She's very feminine, but at the same time, extremely free. A Saint Laurent woman is actually very Parisian. She's not really a man's equal, she's his adversary. I worked on the catwalk with two models who worked with Yves Saint Laurent for more than 10 years. They're not just gorgeous models, they're more than that - they're very smart and very beautiful. They're more than models, they're really unique; it's personality. It's more than just fashion.

Jalil Lespert

A Quote by Robert Higgs

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors