20th-century Economist Quotes

In some settings, however, rampant opportunistic behavior severely limits what can be done jointly without major investments in monitoring and sanctioning arrangements.

The organizational design is the responsibility of the CEO, and the designer's role is to act as midwife to aid in the rebirth of the organization.

Kenneth D. Mackenzie

I started delivering flowers for 25 cents a shot so don't tell me about the shop floor.

"Be in high-growth markets." In the old economic order, in the age of market share, volume growth was a guarantor of success. Growth was what we were taught to pursue. It created higher profits for all, including market share laggards, companies with poor business designs, and companies that were poorly managed. A rising tide raised all boats. One manager articulated the classic view: "There are no management problems that volume growth can't solve. Even if we manage poorly, rising revenue helps cover the mistakes we made."

Adrian Slywotzky

In most, if not quite all, parts of the world, the size, shape and longevity of the human body have changed more substantially, and much more rapidly, during the past three centuries than over many previous millennia.

The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World

Bernard Lietaer

Only communist regimes have churned out more jargon than modern business.

Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between its costs and return, and between the short and the long term. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.

There is a widespread impression today that the history of economics is a sequence of revolutions and counter-revolutions, successive schools rising to dominance just to be deposed in a crisis by another school. According to this view, paraphrasing Marx, all history of economics is a history of school struggles, punctuated by revolutions.

Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.

If a train stops at a train station, what do you think happens at a work station?

In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.

Arms control is so often identified with limitations on the possession or deployment of weapons that it is often overlooked that this reciprocated investment in non-nuclear capability was a remarkable instance of unacknowledged but reciprocated arms control.

Thomas Schelling

Any author who uses mathematics should always express in ordinary language the meaning of the assumptions he admits, as well as the significance of the results obtained. The more abstract his theory, the more imperative this obligation.
In fact, mathematics are and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, mathematics do not constitute an end in itself, they are and can only be a means.

There is a very real danger that financial regulation will become a wolf in sheep's clothing.

If you look carefully, almost all Old Money secrets can be traced to a single source: a longer-term outlook.

Bill Bonner (author)

There were a large number of Jews who held more favorable positions than they should have, according to their percentage of the population. Germans should have held those positions.

There was no Marshall Plan for Harry Potter, no International Financing Facility for books about underage wizards. It is heartbreaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can't get twelve-cent medicine to dying poor children.

William Easterly

Realistically, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from one crisis to the next. It is difficult to forecast how long this will continue for, but it cannot go on endlessly. Governments will pile up more debt — and then one day, the house of cards will collapse.

At this point, then, a junction is effected between the previously developed train of thought on countervailing passions and the doctrine of interest. Both doctrines originated in Machiavelli; yet the final outcome—the promotion of avarice to the position of the privileged passion given the job of taming the wild ones and of making in this fashion a crucial contribution to statecraft—would have greatly surprised and outraged him.

Albert O. Hirschman

The enemy and his allies are now at the gates of the capitalists' fortress. Is there any hope that the businessman will finally sense the danger to himself and the system of which he is a part and rise to meet the challenge?

Benjamin A. Rogge

The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.

Retirement should be a happier time, conditioned upon not being ill.

David Blanchflower

The firm as a relatively durable organizational structure is able to deal with the lack of knowledge about the future fruits of research and development and innovation. Its relative internal stability means that it can carry unquantifiable risks which would be eschewed in the volatility of the market. In particular large firms are able to set up and sustain R&D departments with their own funds. It is widely recognized that atomized, small-scale private enterprise is not well able to make such long-term commitments.

Geoffrey Hodgson

To be sure, dictators are crafty, evil geniuses with awesome firepower at their disposal. They are also brutally efficient at intimidation, terrorism, and mass slaughter. However, a force is able to dominate because the counterforce is either nonexistent or weak.