Top 473 Economists Quotes & Sayings - Page 5

Politicians of all stripes are always in danger at looking at every problem from an abstract point of view or being briefed by officials, academics, or economists who know every science but the science of human nature.

My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics.

The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down.

Discovering various economists, economic works, reading financial periodicals and keeping up on current events in geopolitics and economics around the world opened my eyes to many facets of how the extended order works.

People tend to think that numbers are quite objective, but numbers in economics are not like this. Some economists say they're like sausages: you don't know what they really are until you cut into them.

I would say that folks who have looked at this issue for a long time, whether it's Elizabeth Warren or many other economists, will tell you that right now, yes, we do need a 21st century Glass-Steagall legislation.

That economic decisions are made without certain knowledge of the consequences is pretty self-evident. But, although many economists were aware of this elementary fact, there was no systematic analysis of economic uncertainty until about 1950.

Researchers may like to think that, given all the facts, we make rational choices. Ask economists how that assumption works out for them. No, we are emotional creatures who use value-based reasoning in conjunction with our rationality.

In an age in which economists take for granted that people equate well-being with consumption, increasing numbers of people seem willing to trade certain freedoms and material comforts for a sense of immutable order and the rapture of faith.

Lift the curtain and 'the State' reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists.

'Fun money' is another thing that makes no sense to traditional economists. Because there's just money; there's no 'fun money.' It's all supposed to be the same.

Economists who adhere to rational-expectations models of the world will never admit it, but a lot of what happens in markets is driven by pure stupidity - or, rather, inattention, misinformation about fundamentals, and an exaggerated focus on currently circulating stories.

Parents, teachers, professors, economists, pundits, entrepreneurs, tinkerers and misfits all have to do a better job of unapologetically singing the praises of capitalism and free markets which unequivocally demonstrate the ability to pull people out of poverty and improve and lengthen their lives.

Economists sometimes do try to reduce behavior to law-like predictability. But people respond differently to different primes, to different contexts even from one moment to the next. We possess multiple selves that are aroused by different circumstances.

Contrary to what professional economists will typically tell you, economics is not a science. All economic theories have underlying political and ethical assumptions, which make it impossible to prove them right or wrong in the way we can with theories in physics or chemistry.

My professional apprenticeship at Iowa State College from 1930 to 1943 could not have been better; the Great Depression made it so, and the talented younger economists at Ames during that period made it an exciting and profitable intellectual experience.

If Mexican farm labor is so much cheaper, maybe we should be growing our fruits and vegetables in Mexico. There's absolutely no reason to import Mexicans to do something they could do at home and then sell to us. I believe this is what economists call "competitive advantage".

The economy, unemployment, the future... Politicians, economists, and journalists are constantly debating these key issues for our country but rarely come to an answer. But behind all this, there is a fairly simple truth: no matter what anybody says, jobs are hard to come by.

During the two centuries since the publication of 'The Wealth of Nations,' the main activity of economists, it seems to me, has been to fill the gaps in Adam Smith's system, to correct his errors and to make his analysis vastly more exact.

Economists have understood since the Victorian era that the main benefits of trade come from comparative advantage: the idea that people can specialize in what they're good at and then benefit from exchange. The principle is no more mysterious than specialization in the labor market.

The government employs scientists of many varieties in technical capacities, from estimating the environmental toxicity of a chemical to the structural soundness of a bridge. But when it comes to forming policies, these scientists and, especially, behavioral scientists are rarely at the table with the lawyers and the economists.

I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so they don't even talk - sometimes not even with their girlfriend or boyfriend or friends - about what they are doing.

As there are so many who talk prose without knowing it, or, again, who syllogize without having the least idea what a syllogism is, so economists have long been mathematicians without being aware of the fact.

For me, geopolitical issues are becoming more important, because how can you understand economy if you don't understand geopolitics? People think economists just deal with spreadsheets and charts. That's a narrow-minded caricature.

I ask the political economists and the moralists if they have ever calculated the number of individuals who must be condemned to misery, overwork, demoralisation, degradation, rank ignorance, overwhelming misfortune and utter penury in order to produce one rich man.

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.

I may be only a fish and chip shop lady, but some of these economists need to get their heads out of the textbooks and get a job in the real world. I would not even let one of them handle my grocery shopping.

When I was Governor, Louis Kelso went out of his way to brief me. I was very impressed, but I was never able to get any of the economists in state government to give him the help his plan deserves.

We've had a number of economists supporting our legislation. And here's where we are. The American people can judge. Six largest financial institutions in America today have assets of roughly $10 trillion; equivalent to 58 percent of the GDP of the United States of America.

I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

Congress has always had a soft spot for "experts" who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.

Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.

Oil could complicate domestic politics in countries with too much of it - there is a reason economists talk about 'the curse of oil,' and dictatorships have thrived in countries with abundant natural resources.

As economists bandy about terms like 'recapitalization,' 'credit lines,' and 'liquidity,' families are facing brutal cuts to their social services and welfare payments, losing their homes, wondering how their kids will make their way in the world.

Various economists and experts had suggested increasing government spending to fight COVID-19, to help the poor survive. On the other hand, businesses were helped so that the jobs are protected. As a result, the fiscal deficit may look slightly high.

When you poll all of the economists, uh, across America that I think are intellectually honest they would all, or maybe not all, but 95% of them 96% of them would say you know we really have got a powerful economy.

Yeah, you know, there's a difference between the textbook world that economists like to imagine, and the real world where real people have real feelings.

Economists got away from really questioning how the world works, how decisions actually got made. If something doesn't conform to neoclassical models ... people are not somehow behaving themselves properly.

Instead of a universal basic income, we could have a basic income guarantee. Or, as economists prefer to call it, a negative income tax.

Economists think the poor need them to tell them that they are poor.

This fear of criticism displayed by the advocates of freedom of criticism cannot be attributed solely to craftiness. No, the majority of the Economists look with sincere resentment upon all theoretical controversies, factional disagreements, broad political questions, plans for organising revolutionaries, etc.

When economists speak of money, they neglect that all money and credit is debt. That is the essence of bookkeeping and accounting. There are always two sides to the balance sheet. And one party’s money or savings is another party

I don't think quantitative easing is deliberately misleading, but I do think it's suspiciously bland and reassuring. It doesn't sound like anything big, experimental, scary and strange - which is what many economists think it is.

My fellow economists and academics fail to understand the economics of trade in the real world. Traditional models of academia respect free trade without considering whether it is fair trade.

Thirty years ago, many economists argued that inflation was a kind of minor inconvenience and that the cost of reducing inflation was too high a price to pay. No one would make those arguments today.

Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.

I know economists will say well, we could run a small deficit but the problem is that once you cross that line as we see in the United States, nothing stops deficits from getting larger and larger and spiralling out of control.

Whether the flavour of economic advice you like is conservative or liberal, you will find that flavour available from some 'reputable' economist, since there is no single standard to which all 'reputable' economists must repair.

The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call 'signaling.'

I've felt for some time that economics needs to be taught differently by economists who actually have had experience making a payroll or investing on Wall Street. When economics is taught by pure academics, watch out.

Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

Thanks to the central bank, most "monetary experts" and "leading macro-economists" can, by putting them on the payroll, be turned into government propagandists "explaining," like alchemists, how stones (paper) can be turned into bread (wealth).

Contrary to economists' beliefs, the informal sectors of the world's economies, in total, are predominant, and the institutionalized, monetized sectors grow out of them and rest upon them, rather than the reverse.

In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.

If economists were good at business, they would be rich men instead of advisers to rich men.

Governments, political parties, pressure groups, and the bureaucrats of the educational hierarchy think they can avoid the inevitable consequences of unsuitable measures by boycotting and silencing the independent economists. But truth persists and works, even if nobody is left to utter it.

I'm not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.

Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so they dont even talk - sometimes not even with their girlfriend or boyfriend or friends - about what they are doing.

Many economists are great believers in the idea that everything in nature is competitive and that we should set up a society which is competitive to reflect that. Anyone who cannot keep up, well, too bad.