Latest Kenneth Arrow Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The Germans, for example, have some kind of compromise between single-member and broader districts. In Israel, you have nothing, you have only a national election. You have no local districts at all. And that's because of the idea that in addition to other ideological differences, locality matters. The question is does the congressman represent his district and the interests of his district? And as I said there's quite a variety of systems the democratic world. The implications need to be examined.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Israel, Ideas, Differences

  Source: electology.org

• In The United States, the only real change I know has been Instant Runoff, which is usually applied to municipal elections. I see no real improvement. There's another aspect which comes out of the two-party system, which the primary, a funny kind of two-stage election. And people certainly have complained.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Real, Party, Two

  Source: electology.org

• You will vote for first choice candidate whether or not you think he'll win. But I'm saying you may find yourself for a candidate, a middling candidate, a candidate you don't think very well of, really. And you really don't like to avoid a catastrophe. Well, maybe that's a good thing. You can argue that back and forth.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Winning, Choices

  Source: electology.org

• There's only one problem that bothers me. And that's something my theorem [ of Impossibility] really doesn't cover. In my theorem I was assuming people vote sincerely. The trouble with methods where you have three or four classes, I think if people vote sincerely they may well be very satisfactory. The problem is the incentive to misrepresent your vote may be high.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Class, People

  Source: electology.org

• Unsolved problems, that's one of the great signs of progress in my opinion.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Progress, Opinion, Problem

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• The rate of growth of the relevant population is much greater than the rate of growth in funds, though funds have gone up very nicely. But we have been producing students at a rapid rate; they're competing for funds and therefore they're more frustrated. I think there's a certain sense of weariness in the intellectual realm, it's not in any way peculiar to economics, it's a general proposition.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Growth, Frustrated

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• I do sense, as compared with let's say the early '50s, there's somewhat more of a careerism. I don't think it's anything special to economics; it's equally true with physics or biology. A graduate education has become a more career-oriented thing, and part of that is because of the need for funding. In fact, that's a much worse problem in the natural sciences than it is in economics. So you can't even do your work in the natural sciences, particularly, and even to some extent in economics, without funding.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Careers, Special

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Meteorology, Guarantees, Exactness

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• There are all sorts of institutions in the economic world which depart from the simple price/market model which I worked on in an earlier incarnation and which has been sort of the mainstream of economic theories since Adam Smith and David Ricardo. There are all sorts of contractual relations between firms and individuals which do not conform to the simple price theory - profit-sharing schemes and so forth - and the explanation for these suddenly became clear. We now understand why these emerged and that they are based on differences in information in the economy.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Simple, Differences, World

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• Economics in college was very poor; I was not very impressed with it. I actually wanted to study statistics. I discovered mathematical statistics as an undergraduate and was fascinated with it.

  Kenneth Arrow

  College, Statistics, Study

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• I think that systems that are based on employment are illogical and attempts to meet them create all sorts of unnecessary complexities.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Employment, Unnecessary

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• The health care provisions are presumably for individuals. And whoever pays for them, whether it's paid by the individual, state, whatever, the value is an individually based value. It has nothing to do with employment.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Employment, Care, Pay

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• Evolutionary theory tends to explain quite well in retrospect how various species emerged. It's not very good on prediction. Nevertheless, one cannot say that there isn't a lot of knowledge that's been obtained in this field. In the same way, with these complex physical phenomena between solid state physics, you can say a lot of things without necessarily knowing the next step.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Knowing, Retrospect, Way

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• We have to be more modest in what we claim.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Claims, Modest

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• I think one of the things we learned from the physicists and also the theoretical biologists is the idea that when you're dealing with very complex systems you're going to get a large variety of behavior which can be interpreted as hill climbing, but hill climbing with a lot of modifications, hill climbing with big jumps occasionally.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Ideas, Climbing

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• The world is changing. We're not really proceeding on a stationary basis.

  Kenneth Arrow

  World, Bases, Stationary

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• When you look at any experimental work not directly related to economics, but trying to test rational behavior in other ways, experiments have conspicuously failed to show rational behavior. Macro evidence certainly suggests deviations from rationality, but I don't want to say the rationality hypothesis is completely wrong. If you have any introspective idea or experimental idea about people's behavior, it seems to be incompatible with the really full scale rational expectations.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Ideas, Expectations, People

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• It seems to me that at least as far as the financial markets are concerned, there is increasing evidence against rational expectations, even at the macro level.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Expectations, Levels, Financial

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• Usefulness depends on tractability.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Depends, Usefulness

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• I don't believe that unemployment is all voluntary, by anticipation of future wage movements or this sort of thing. I know you can modify the models by taking into account the indivisibilities, but I don't really think that people are voluntarily unemployed.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Believe, Thinking, People

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• There is a bit of a problem with the match between derivative securities markets and the primary markets. We have long ago instituted principles, essentially high margin requirements, to prevent certain instabilities in the stock market, and I think they're basically correct. The trouble is that there's a linkage, let's say, between something like the stock market and the index futures markets, and the fact that the margin requirements are very different, for example, played some role in the October '87 crash.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Long Ago, Requirements

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• One doesn't like instabilities in markets; they may be damaging, but probably not fatal, as the October '87 crash showed. It turned out to be essentially inconsequential. So if that's true, I'm not very worried about the welfare of those who are investing any more than I am about the welfare of those who go into casinos.

  Kenneth Arrow

  October, Investing, May

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• I'm struck by the fact that by and large equity capital doesn't play a big role in new financing; it's either bonds or internal financing but not really equity. And therefore, it's not clear that anything which improves the equity markets has really much to do with the productivity of the economy as a whole.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Play, Facts, Roles

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• I am not really inclined to think there is any very effective regulation of the derivative securities markets that would be useful. People who go into it essentially ought to know what risks they're taking and I don't see any useful regulation.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, People, Risk

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

• Venture capital has done much more, I think, to improve efficiency than anything.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Done, Venture

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org