George Stigler - Economic Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

View all George Stigler Quotes
The delicate and intricate pattern of competition and cooperation in the economic behavior of the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Stockholm offers a challenge to the economist that is perhaps as complex as the challenges of the physicist and the chemist.

George Stigler
We are entitled to be disappointed, but not to be surprised, by the persistence of governmental intervention in economic life. A school of thought attributes great influence to public opinion in the movements toward or away from laissez-faire. Among the many members of this school one may mention Albert Venn Dicey, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.

George Stigler
Unlike the members of the physical and biological sciences, the economist is asked to explain his work in a manner that is interesting and convincing to a weary listener. Yet there is no reason to believe that the explanation of our economic and social world is inherently simpler than the explanation of our physical world.

George Stigler
Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic phenomena.

George Stigler
Some important aspects of important aspects of economic organization take on a new meaning when they are considered from the viewpoint of the search of information.

George Stigler
Early in my professional life, I found that many areas of economics attracted me. I started working and publishing in price theory by 1938. In 1946, I published an early work on linear programming (The Cost of Subsistence) which solved the problem only approximately; George Dantzig soon presented the exact solution. In the 1940s, I began empirical work on price theory, starting with a test of the kinked oligopoly demand curve theory of rigid prices.

George Stigler
The state —the machinery and power of the state— is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries. That political juggernaut, the petroleum industry, is an immense consumer of political benefits, and simultaneously the underwriters of marine insurance have their more modest repast. The central tasks of the theory of economic regulation are to explain who will receive the benefits or burdens of regulation, what form regulation will take, and the effects of regulation upon the allocation of resources.

George Stigler
One should hardly have to tell academicians that information is a valuable resource: knowledge is power. And yet this occupies a slum dwelling in the town of economics. Mostly it is ignored.

George Stigler
In spite of assigning little influence of economists' preachings on actual public policy, I do not believe that economists' influence is negligible. The reconciliation of these views lies in the fact that economists are scientists as well as preachers. Our science seeks to understand how economic institutions and economic systems work, and no informed person can deny that we have made much progress in this work.

George Stigler
It is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.

George Stigler