20th-century Economist Quotes

Dag Hammarskjöld
Amartya Sen
Paul Krugman
Kenneth Arrow
Joseph Stiglitz
Gunnar Myrdal
Muhammad Yunus

The mere thought of investment in human beings is offensive to some among us. Our values and beliefs inhibit us from looking upon human beings as capital goods, except in slavery, and this we abhor... To treat human beings as wealth that can be augmented by investment runs counter to deeply held values. It seems to reduce man once again to a mere material component, something akin to property. And for man to look upon himself as a capital good, even if it did not impair his freedom, may seem to debase him... (But) by investing in themselves, people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. It is one way free men can enhance their welfare.

Theodore Schultz
Theodore Schultz
Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.

Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hammarskjöld
Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning.

I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. So economic models — how any model by definition isn't right. When someone just says, 'Oh, your model is wrong.' That's not much of an insight. What you want to know is, is wrong in important ways or wrong in ways that are less relevant? And you want to know what does the data really say about the model?

Lars Peter Hansen
Lars Peter Hansen
Nearly all educational expenditure should be considered a capital outlay, whether it provides a future return in the form of enhanced taxable income or in terms of an enhanced quality of life.

William Vickrey
William Vickrey
"Any graduate of the ___ Business School should be able to beat an index fund over the course of a market cycle."
Statements such as these are made with alarming frequency by investment professionals. In some cases, subtle and sophisticated reasoning may be involved. More often (alas), the conclusions can only be justified by assuming that the laws of arithmetic have been suspended for the convenience of those who choose to pursue careers as active managers.

William F. Sharpe
William F. Sharpe
Almost anything one says or has said about what society wants or should get is threatened with internal inconsistency.

By about the year 2000 Communist China will be a superpower built by American technology and skill.

Some bodies of knowledge emerge over time in a process of coevolution with the location in which they are embedded.

Most of economics can be summarized in four words: 'People respond to incentives.' The rest is commentary.

Steven Landsburg
Steven Landsburg
Biographies are like anthologies, especially anthologies of poetry. One's eyes are magnetically directed to what ought to be there but isn't, as well as to what oughtn't to be there but is.

The scholars who understand it hesitate to speak out boldly for fear people will not understand. The people, who understand it quite easily, also fear to speak out while they wait for the scholars to speak out first. The difference between our present situation and that of the story is that it is not the emperor but the people who are periodically made to go naked and hungry and insecure and discontented - a ready prey to less timid organizers of discontent for the destruction of the civilization.

Social costs... are all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities.

The relationship of agency is one of the oldest and commonest codified codes of social interaction. We will say that an agency relationship has arisen between two (or more) parties when one, designated as the agent, acts for the other, designated the principal, in a particular domain of decision problems. Examples of agency are universal.

Most "original" ideas aren't completely original, but instead are the result of two basic methods for generating ideas: problems in search of solutions and solutions in search of problems.

Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships.

You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying.

The average Mexican lives longer now than the average Briton did in 1955. Infant mortality is lower today in Nepal than it was in Italy in 1951. The proportion of Vietnamese living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 90 per cent to 30 per cent in twenty years. The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better.

Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley
Don't ask from whom the economy hides; it hides from you!

Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

Paul Collier
Paul Collier
Instruct regulators to look for the newest fad in the industry and examine it with great care. The next mistake will be a new way to make a loan that will not be repaid.

L. William Seidman
L. William Seidman
General advertising is Cyrano. He comes under your window and sings; people get used to it and ignore it. But if Roxane responds, there's a relationship. We move the brand relationship up a notch. Advertising becomes a dialogue that becomes an invitation to a relationship.

Anyone who pretends to know if we are out of the woods yet is clearly kidding themselves or misleading their audience.... Things have stabilized in Europe and it's in their interest to be optimistic but the muddle-through is still on.

Modern macroeconomics flourished in its pursuit of the secrets of long-run economic growth, but it neglected short-run economic problems. In the long run, prices are flexible, and the growth of the economy is determined by the growth in the ability to supply goods and services. But in the short run prices are not flexible. Growth can be held back because prices are too high and, as a result, demand is too low. Keynes made his name by analyzing short-run problems caused by the stickiness or even rigidity of some important prices. But these Keynesian ideas were abandoned by modern macroeconomics.

Most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative. To make sure that people accepted wage labor, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support.