Economics Quotes - Page 15

• In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in the grounds and foundations of all rational decisions.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  People, Decision, Foundation

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• ...a discontinuity, like a vacuum, is abhorred by nature.

  Harold Hotelling

  Vacuums, Discontinuity

  Harold Hotelling (2012). “The Collected Economics Articles of Harold Hotelling”, p.52, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful results.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Example, Littles, Way

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

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• The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

  Charles P. Kindleberger

  Lasts, Firsts, Derivatives

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• ...even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds.

  Frank Knight

  Mind, Professors

  Frank H. Knight (2012). “Risk, Uncertainty and Profit”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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• It is universally appreciated, I think, that theorists are able to tweak their assumptions in order to reach any conclusion they wish. The believability of the conclusion depends not only on the fact that it was reached but on how hard the theorist had to tweak the model to get there.

  David M. Kreps

  Thinking, Order, Wish

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• However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.

  Paul Krugman

  Doe, Analysis, Facts

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• Time is a device to stop everything from happening at once ... space is a device to stop everything from happening in Cambridge.

  Dharma Kumar

  Space, Cambridge, Devices

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• A tip for generalists who try to read economic research papers: If you get to a section that's incomprehensible, don't give up. Just skip to the next section.

  David Leonhardt

  Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Trying

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• Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions.

  Wassily Leontief

  Arbitrary, Pages, Assumption

  Wassily Leontief (1966). “Essays in Economics: Theories, Theorizing, Facts, and Policies”, p.10, Transaction Publishers

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• The danger of tautological propositions is considerable in discussions of the concept of normal profits. Because supernormal profits seem to invite newcomers to an industry and sub-normal profits seem to drive away those who are in an industry, some writers are inclined to define normal profits as the earnings of the fixed resources in an industry which neither grows nor declines in size or number of firms. It should be clear that such a definition is useless: it muddles together attractiveness and actual afflux, desirbility of entry and ease of entry, zero profits and monopoly rents.

  Fritz Machlup

  Zero, Numbers, Together

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• I admit that these terms and the diagrams connected with them repel some readers, and fill others with the vain imagination that they have mastered difficult economics problems, when really they have done little more than learn the language in which parts of those problems can be expressed, and the machinery by which they can be handled. When the actual conditions of particular problems have not been studied, such knowledge is little better than a derrick for sinking oil-wells erected where there are no oil-bearing strata.

  Alfred Marshall

  Oil, Imagination, Done

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• I am stretching out this volume, since those German dogs estimate the value of books by their cubic contents.

  Karl Marx

  Dog, Book, Volume

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1956). “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Correspondence, [1843-1895].”

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• The solution was eventually found by Johannes Gutenberg, who made the breakthrough that finally established printing as the communication technology of the future. Similar ideas may have been under development around the same time in Prague and Haarlem. But in business, the key question is not about who else is in the race, it's about who gets there first. Johannes Gutenberg was the first to make the new technology work, ensuring his place in any history of the human race.

  Alister E. McGrath

  Communication, Technology, Keys

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• Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.

  John Stuart Mill

  Taken, Light, People

  John Stuart Mill (2015). “Autobiography of John Stuart Mill”, p.128, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• You can always get sympathy by using the word small. With little industries you feel as you do about a little puppy.

  Frances Perkins

  Littles, Puppy, Feels

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• Even as a young man, Vito Corleone became known as a "man of reasonableness." He never uttered a threat. He always used logic that proved to be irresistible. He always made certain that the other fellow got his share of profit. Nobody lost. He did this, of course, by obvious means. Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.

  Mario Puzo

  Mean, Men, Competition

  1969 The Godfather, bk.3, ch.14.

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• A colleague saw the same model-calibrating the elasticity of demand facing a Cournot oligopolist as a function of the number of firms in the industry--described at the University of Chicago and at M.I.T. A Chicago economist derived the formula and said, "Look at how few firms you need to get close to infinite elasticities and perfect competition." An M.I.T. economist derived the same formula and said, "Look at how large n has to be before you get anywhere close to an infinite elasticity and perfect competition."

  Matthew Rabin

  Numbers, Perfect, Competition

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• Hume develops his arguments by a series of models. He doesn't call them models in the pretentious way in which we envelope, very often, pure banalities in this jargon

  Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins

  Jargon, Envelopes, Way

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• If economists did not concern themselves with economic efficiency, nobody would.

  Dennis Holme Robertson

  Efficiency, Economist, Concern

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• Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Enemy, Obviousness, Correctness

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.48, 谷月社

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• Marshall's crime is to pretend to handle imperfect competition with tools only applicable to perfect competition.

  Paul Samuelson

  Perfect, Competition, Tools

  Paul Anthony Samuelson (2014). “Paul Samuelson on the History of Economic Analysis: Selected Essays”, p.419, Cambridge University Press

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• I'il n'est pas en notre pouvoir de changer la nature des choses. Il faut les йtudier telles qu'elles sont.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

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• Course titles and even course descriptions often fail to reveal what is actually taught (much less learned).

  F. M. Scherer

  Titles, Taught, Failing

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• It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Men, Often Is, Perspective

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.76, Routledge

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