Kenneth Arrow Quotes - Page 2

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• Family is a difficult matter. I must admit I do not know that the state can intervene successfully in a family. It's a fact that everything is connected with the individualist temperament, the kind of economic environment which stresses the individual, but this is not directly the result of a state policy, nor do I see any good way by which the state could intervene except in some marginal ways.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Stress, Way, Facts

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• 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

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• The general uncertainty about the prospects of medical treatment is socially handled by rigid entry requirements. These are designed to reduce the uncertainty in the mind of the consumer as to the quality insofar as this is possible. I think this explanation, which is perhaps the naive one, is much more tenable than any idea of a monopoly seeking to increase incomes.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Ideas, Mind

  Kenneth Joseph Arrow (1983). “Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow: Applied economics”, p.42, Harvard University Press

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• My research, even before 1972, moved in directions beyond those cited for the Nobel Memorial Prize. Most of it, in one way or another, deals with information as an economic variable, both as to its production and as to its use.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Memorial, Use, Research

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• The switch to the market in Eastern Europe, of course, has not exactly been one of the greatest advertisements for the market. There's no question the socialist system - and I hate to use the word 'socialist,' but I suppose some description of a system in which the state is in control - was breaking down, really collapsing. In these countries, most markedly in Russia itself and in a number of the others, it obviously was based on a tyranny, which is unacceptable even if it were producing good economic results, which it was not.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Country, Hate, Europe

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• My undergraduate education, at the City College in New York, was made possible only by the existence of that excellent free institution and the financial sacrifices of my parents.

  Kenneth Arrow

  New York, Sacrifice, College

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• I think the development of the venture capital system has been an example of something which is a successful improvement in risk-bearing. It doesn't exactly remove the risks at the beginning, but at least creates greater rewards at a slightly later stage and therefore encourages, say, small companies to engage in technologically risky enterprises.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Successful, Thinking, Risk

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• 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

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• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

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• The trouble is that the risks that are being hedged very well by new financial securities are financial risks. And it appears to me that the real things you want to hedge are real risks, for example, risks in innovation. The fact is that you'd like companies to be able to take bigger chances. Presumably one obstacle to successful R&D, particularly when the costs are large, are the risks involved.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Real, Successful, Risk

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• 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

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• My graduate study was interrupted, like that of many others, by World War II.

  Kenneth Arrow

  War, World, Study

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• In my [Impossibility] theorem I'm assuming that the information is a ranking. Each voter can say of any two candidates, I prefer this one to this one. So then we have essentially a ranking. It's a list saying this is my first choice. This is my second choice. Each voter, in principle, could be asked to give that entire piece of information. In the ordinary Plurality Voting, say as used in electing Congressmen, we generally only ask for the first choice. But, in principle, we could ask for more choices.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Two, Giving, Voting

  Source: electology.org

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• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

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• Classic economic theories recognize public goods aspects of one kind or another - the need for economic intervention in, obviously, the supply of infrastructure and of education. We're not supplying that infrastructure at an appropriate rate today. I don't doubt it isn't just money; it's organization and goals and so forth.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Organization, Goal, Doubt

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

  4 Copy quote

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