Economist Quotes - Page 15

• Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control.

  Richard Thaler

  Retirement, Self, Saving

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• Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families.

  Melinda Gates

  Powerful, Long, Choices

  "Why Birth Control Is Still a Big Idea". foreignpolicy.com. November 26, 2012.

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• An economist says that essentially more for you is less for me, but the lover knows that more for you is more for me, too.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Love, Lovers, Knows

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• Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species

  Garrett Hardin

  Hubris, Potency, Dangerous

  Garrett Hardin (1995). “Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos”, p.73, Oxford University Press

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• When politicians & economists understand we live in a finite world & act accordingly then a better future has a chance

  Phil Harding

  World, Chance, Politician

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• Economist and Africa expert Collier analyzes why a group of 50 nations, home to the poorest one billion people, are failing. Considering issues such as civil war, dependence on extractive industries, and bad governance, he argues that the strongest industrialized countries must enact a plan to help with international policies and standards.

  Amy Lockwood

  Country, War, Home

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• Economists got away from really questioning how the world works, how decisions actually got made. If something doesn't conform to neoclassical models ... people are not somehow behaving themselves properly.

  W. Brian Arthur

  People, Decision, World

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• The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn Waring, throughout the West it generates between 25 and 40 percent of the gross national product.

  Naomi Wolf

  Country, West, Economics

  Naomi Wolf (2009). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women”, p.23, Harper Collins

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• Economists are always recommending the elimination of this or that market imperfection ... no astrophysicist recommends the elimination of planets that he does not like.

  Lester Thurow

  Imperfection, Doe, Elimination

  Lester C. Thurow (1984). “Dangerous currents: the state of economics”, Vintage

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• One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions.

  Robert Menzies

  Opinion, Speak, Variety

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• Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, May, Economy

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• If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.

  Winston Churchill

  Two, Three, Investing

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• I have been....moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero, citing Cato, ascribed to the augurs of Rome-that they should cover their faces or burst into laugher when they met on the street.

  Frank Knight

  Jobs, Rome, May

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• Economists did something even better than predict the crisis. We correctly predicted that we would not be able to predict it.

  William Easterly

  Able, Crisis

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• Economists have much to be humble about.

  Paul Samuelson

  Humble, Be Humble

  "Paul A. Samuelson, Economist, Dies at 94" by Michael M. Weinstein, www.nytimes.com. December 13, 2009.

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• Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mistake, Wonderful, Ends

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• Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise.... It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.

  Mo Udall

  Country, Strong, Believe

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• Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtuesare economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Husband, Humility, Pride

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.61, Harvard University Press

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• But there is no equality of opportunity under existing laws and customs. In the race for wealth, which the economist seems as unable to define as to guide, the toiler is most heavily handicapped in the very start.

  Joshua K. Ingalls

  Opportunity, Race, Law

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• I do not regard the Keynesian revolution as a great intellectual triumph. On the contrary, it was a tragedy because it came so late. Hitler had already found out how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occured.

  Joan Robinson

  Intellectual, Tragedy, Revolution

  American Economic Association, Joan Robinson (1972). “The Second Crisis of Economic Theory: And Other Selected Papers from the American Economic Meeting, December 27-29, 1971”

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• In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Men, Individual Happiness, Iron

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes”

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• Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.

  Joan Robinson

  Views, Hats, Rabbits

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• Progess, do not regress.

  Edward C. Prescott

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• The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

  George Stigler

  Return, Study, Insight

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• I was an economist now turning into a human being - as if these are two different things. I don't know but I did that and then I had no vision.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Two, Vision, Different

  "Stephen Covey Interviews Grameen Bank Founder Muhammad Yunus". Interview with Stephen Covey, socialbusinesspedia.com. November 1, 2016.

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