Economist Quotes - Page 13

• Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can strangle competition and can limit what economists call 'incremental innovation' - innovations that build, in some way, on others.

  James Surowiecki

  People, Drug, Competition

  "Exporting I.P". www.newyorker.com. May 14, 2007.

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• Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.

  James Surowiecki

  Real, People, Pay

  "The Fairness Trap". www.newyorker.com. June 4 & 11, 2012.

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• Popular as Keynesian fiscal policy may be, many economists are skeptical that it works. They argue that fine-tuning the economy is a virtually impossible task, and that fiscal-stimulus programs are usually too small, and arrive too late, to make a difference.

  James Surowiecki

  Differences, Making A Difference, Tasks

  "The Stimulus Strategy". www.newyorker.com. February 25, 2008.

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• For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.

  Thomas Piketty

  Long, Use, Scientific Method

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• Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Economics, Unlikely

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• Percentages! Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can't define your identity.

  Mary E. Pearson

  Identity, Politician, Polls

  Mary E. Pearson (2009). “The Adoration of Jenna Fox”, p.185, Macmillan

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• I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Trying, Photographer

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• I see the God complex around me all the time in my fellow economists. I see it in our business leaders. I see it in the politicians we vote for - people who, in the face of an incredibly complicated world, are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they understand the way that the world works.

  Tim Harford

  Motivation, Inspiration, Complicated World

  "Trial, error and the God complex". TED conference, www.ted.com. July 2011.

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• Why do economists fall in love with authoritarian governments?

  Yasheng Huang

  Falling In Love, Motivation, Inspiration

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• Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in a community. It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist.

  Peter Block

  Believe, Mean, Self

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• Economists, like royal children, are not punished for their errors.

  James Buchan

  Children, Errors, Royal

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• If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

  Larry Page

  Growth, Our Society, Problem

  "20 Things I’ve Learned From Larry Page" by James Altucher, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2015.

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• We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  People, Auctions, Phases

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• You do not have to be an economist to know that putting up the cost of employing someone is a pretty barking thing to do when you're trying to get out of a recession.

  David Cameron

  Trying, Cost, Things To Do

  "The Economist" Interview, www.economist.com. March 31, 2010.

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• I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.

  Rupert Murdoch

  Weather, Looks, Knows

  "Newscorp papers hammered". Interview with Michael Rowland, www.abc.net.au. May 7, 2009.

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• Economists' unanimity that bad business is ahead is the most reassuring news possible. It's very unlikely that this will be the one time they're right.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Business, News, Reassuring

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• It's clear that policymakers and economists are going to be interested in the measurement of well-being primarily as it correlates with health; they also want to know whether researchers can validate subjective responses with physiological indices.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Want, Measurement, Well Being

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• As economists have often pointed out, we pay doctors for quantity, not quality. As they point out less often, we also pay them as individuals, rather than as members of a team working together for their patients. Both practices have made for serious problems.

  Atul Gawande

  Team, Doctors, Practice

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• One the one hand, our economists treat human beings as rational actors making choices to maximize their own economic benefit. On the other hand, the same companies that hire those economists also pay for advertising campaigns that use the raw materials of myth and magic to encourage people to act against their own best interests, whether it's a matter of buying overpriced fizzy sugar water or the much more serious matter of continuing to support the unthinking pursuit of business as usual in the teeth of approaching disaster.

  John Michael Greer

  Hands, People, Water

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• Joel Waldfogel is one of the smartest and funniest economists on the planet. I think of him every time I start to unwrap a present. Buy Scroogenomics for your friends and family. It makes the perfect Christmas gift.

  Ian Ayres

  Thinking, Perfect, Family And Friends

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• You know economists; they're the sort of people who see something works in practice and wonder if it would work in theory.

  Ronald Reagan

  Practice, Wonder, Theory

  "Ronald Reagan".

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• Not a single one of the doctrines of Marx has ever been accepted by any economist or any philosopher. But what of it? It was necessary that Gaiseric should convince economists or philosophers that there were sound reasons why he should capture Rome. He and his followers wanted it, and they had the power to take it.

  Thomas Nixon Carver

  Rome, Reason Why, Sound

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• Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper.

  Robert Solow

  Sex, Trying, Paper

  Robert Solow on Milton Friedman's ideas and his own, in a series of papers at a 1966 conference, also published in ‪"Price Controls" by Hugh Rockoff, 1992.

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• Economists who speak the English tongue are strangely intimidated by mathematical symbols.

  Al Nichol

  Tongue, Speak, Economics

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• One of the profound effects of economics in our day is that the people with the money and the power have embraced the guilt-free, external-less, everything-will-turn-out-okay-in-the-end philosophy of economics in order to justify their own evil works. And the economists, for the most part, have sucked up to that money.

  Jane Smiley

  Philosophy, Order, People

  "Other Economists in the Room" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 19, 2009.

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