A Quote by Tim Harford

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can.

Tim Harford

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Allowed Economist Economists Forecast Say Serious Themselves Thinks Trap Walk

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Tim Harford
English - Economist
Born: 1973

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

Tim Harford

I never understand why 'economist makes forecast' is ever a headline. Whether the economist in question is from the International Monetary Fund, a City forecasting group or the Treasury - a forecast is still not news.

Tim Harford

Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said in a meeting: 'If economists wanted to study the horse, they wouldn't go around and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, `What would I do if I were a horse?' '

Ronald Coase

Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, On the one hand on the other.

Harry S. Truman

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

The years of the Great Depression were a superb time for economists because people not knowing what could be done or what should be done would always assume that maybe an economist had the answer. If you were just a lawyer in Washington, you were nobody. But if you were an economist, you might have the answer.

John Kenneth Galbraith

I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person.

John Kenneth Galbraith

I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.

Rupert Murdoch

I do not say correct or savory. I do not say seemly or even natural. I say serious. Sensationally serious. Unspeakably serious. Solemnly, recklessly, blissfully serious.

Philip Roth

I did what I have been told to do by my queen. In so doing, I fell into a trap I couldn't escape. I still can't." "The trap of LUUUUVVVV, I thought sarcastically. But he was too serious, too calm, to mock.

Charlaine Harris

I'm an economist by training. I don't really work as an economist. I only worked briefly as an economist.

Ben Stein

In basketball, there are no trap games. If you walk out on that court and lose a game, it's because the other team beat you. You played poorly. But there's no trap game.

Kelvin Sampson

Question: Why does anyone bother to listen to economists anymore? The profession has become an embarrassment, and the most respected economists have shown themselves to have as much predictive power as a deck of tarot cards.

Stephen Moore

In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science can only be satisfactorily treated on an explicitly mathematical basis.

William Stanley Jevons

If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.

Paul Krugman

[Albert]Camus had denounced the gulag and Stalin's trials. Today we can see that he was right. To say that there were concentration camps in the USSR at the time was blasphemous, something very serious indeed. Today we think about the USSR with the camps also in mind, but before it just wasn't allowed. Nobody was allowed to think that or say that if you were left-wing.

Catherine Camus

A Quote by Tim Harford

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