Quotes About Economics

The decision of whether or not to protect individuals against their mistakes therefore presents a dilemma for behavioral economists. The economists of the Chicago school do not face that problem, because rational agents do not make mistakes. For adherents of this school, freedom is free of charge.

ideas about politics and economics are a lot like movie stars. If people think that other people like them, such ideas can go far.

fairness concerns are economically significant, a fact we had suspected but did not prove. Employers who violate rules of fairness are punished by reduced productivity, and merchants who follow unfair pricing policies can expect to lose sales. People who learned from a new catalog that the merchant was now charging less for a product that they had recently bought at a higher price reduced their future purchases from that supplier by 15%, an average loss of $90 per customer.

There is only one way to make money: finding out what other people want or need and then providing those things to as many of our fellow humans as possible.

A good way to do econometrics is to look for good natural experiments and use statistical methods that can tidy up the confounding factors that Nature has not controlled for us.

Pogosto je tako. Teorija, filozofija, moderna umetnost, ekonomika in druga gibanja, ki uporabljajo obskurne abstrakcije, se lahko zlahka izrodijo v domišljave nebuloze in postajajo kruti peskovniki akademskih div in elit, ki so vajene tako navduševati kakor tudi ustrahovati.

Working in a system in which financial incentives have been reconfigured to make physician and patient economic rivals, it is hard for either patients or physicians to feel that their value constitutes true dignity-the value that has no price and belongs only to persons.' This is the value of those created in the image and likeness of God. Working

He was explaining how capitalism is bad--and I could see he had a point, but at the same time, I got the feeling that socialism or communism, or whatever he's selling, is probably just as bad, and the problem is human beings can ruin anything, even if it's a good idea to begin with.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.

Traditionally economics has ignored politics, but understanding politics is crucial for explaining world inequality.

This book will show that while economic institutions are critical for determining whether a country is poor or prosperous, it is politics and political institutions that determine what economic institutions a country has.

The most common reason why nations fail today is because they have extractive institutions.

We call such institutions, which have opposite properties to those we call inclusive, extractive economic institutions—extractive because such institutions are designed to extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset.

Our theory has attempted to achieve this by operating on two levels. The first is the distinction between extractive and inclusive economic and political institutions. The second is our explanation for why inclusive institutions emerged in some parts of the world and not in others. While the first level of our theory is about an institutional interpretation of history, the second level is about how history has shaped institutional trajectories of nations. Central

Rich nations are rich largely because they managed to develop inclusive institutions at some point during the past three hundred years. These institutions have persisted through a process of virtuous circles. Even if inclusive only in a limited sense to begin with, and sometimes fragile, they generated dynamics that would create a process of positive feedback, gradually increasing their inclusiveness.

The purely random sample is the only kind that can be examined with confidence by means of statistical theory, but there is one things wrong with it. It is so difficult and expensive to obtain for many uses that sheer cost eliminates it. A more economical substitute, which is almost universally used in such fields as opinion polling and market research, is called stratified random sampling.

The purely random sample is the only kind that can be examined with entire confidence by means of statistical theory, but there is one thing wrong with it. It is so difficult and expensive to obtain for many uses that sheer cost eliminates it. A more economical substitute, which is almost universally used in such fields as opinion polling and market research, is called stratified random sampling.

Now $12 on the $100 for money to be paid back regularly over half a year works out to something like forty-eight per cent real interest.

La deuda no es un instrumento; es un método para hacer ricos a los bancos, no a usted.

The building of publicly funded stadiums has become a substitue for anything resembling an urban policy.

Supply-side economists argue that because lower tax rates allow everyone in the private sector to keep more of what they earn, tax relief provides citizens with strong incentives to work longer hours (thus increasing labor), to save and invest more of their income (thus increasing capital), and to devote more attention to innovation of all kinds (thus increasing efficiency, or TFP).

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.

We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.

Anybody who thinks there can be limitless growth in a static, limited environment is either mad or an economist.