Quotes About Economics

The East India Company created the Dutch empire in Indonesia by means of brute force combined with economic pressure.

The first commercial banks appeared in the late 13th century in Italian towns like Siena. The word comes from banco – Italian for bench – since at first banking services were provided on benches at the town's centre. But banking does not begin with the Italian merchants – its origins lie with the Knights Templar, an order of warrior monks founded in 1096 to ensure the safe passage of European pilgrims heading to Jerusalem in the aftermath of the First Crusade.

Ricardo's second principle is that labour is destined never to become more expensive. From the Labour Theory of Value it follows that all increases in productivity and profit principally happen because labour got cheaper.

This means that workers can expect to get more money as society becomes more advanced, but only because more money is produced. As more of it is produced, it skews the balance of supply vs. demand and so causes inflation – it is as if money itself gets cheaper. So the rate at which wages increase will tend to be the same as the rate of inflation – nominal but never real, in economic terms.

Smith believed that the best way to promote trade was to trust to the self-interest and inventiveness of individual traders.

The self-correcting nature of the market led Smith to think that we could trust the market to provide what was needed – and the principal obstacle to the market trading freely and fulfilling our needs was government intervention.

The invisible hand follows profit, and works less well at providing for needs where the route to making money is less obvious. Aware of this limitation, Smith believed that the state should pay for things like public education to stop people from becoming too stupid.

Smith believed that economic growth stems from specialization. The best way to maximize profit and the efficiency of production was for people to specialize in a few select skills, rather than produce whole products themselves.

It led Smith to agree with Hobbes' phrase "wealth is power" – not because wealth automatically gives its owner political power, but because it gives him or her control of other people's labour.

Forgive me, for those of you who play the lottery — but economists, at least among themselves, refer to the lottery as a stupidity tax, because the odds of getting any payoff by investing your money in a lottery ticket are approximately equivalent to flushing the money directly down the toilet.

Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.

The space shuttle is the most effective device known to man for destroying dollar bills.

If economics were only about profit maximization, it would be just another name for business administration. It is a social discipline, and society has other means of cost accounting besides market prices.

The correct answer to almost any question in economics is: It depends.

The economics we need is of the "seminar room" variety, not the "rule-of-thumb" kind. It is an economics that recognizes its limitations and caveats and knows that the right message depends on the context. The fine print is what economists have to contribute.

The world is better served by syncretic economists and policymakers who can hold multiple ideas in their heads than by 'one-handed' economists who promote one big idea regardless of context.

Ni la convergencia económica ni la homogeneización de preferencias son una consecuencia inevitable de la globalización.

La eurozona fue un experimento sin precedentes. Sus miembros trataron de construir un mercado único y unificado —de bienes, servicios y dinero— mientras la autoridad política seguía residiendo en las unidades nacionales que la formaban. Habría un mercado único, pero muchos sistemas de gobierno.

Field experiments to date have shown that microfinance—the provision of small loans, typically to women or groups of women—is not particularly effective in reducing poverty.14

Los estudiantes acaban de descubrir una característica reveladora de la economía mundial: nuestra fortuna económica está determinada principalmente por dónde (en qué país) nacemos y, sólo de manera secundaria, por el lugar que ocupamos en la escala de distribución de ingresos.

When economists get it right, the world gets better.

policy discussion usually means pitting one model against another. Viewpoints and policy prescriptions that aren't backed by a model typically don't have standing.

las emociones viscerales y la rabia tienen más peso que el cálculo racional de los costes y beneficios económicos.

la heterogeneidad de las preferencias y la falta de singularidad institucional, junto con la geografía, crean una necesidad de diversidad institucional. La diversidad institucional impide la plena globalización económica. A su vez, la incompleta integración económica refuerza la heterogeneidad y el papel de la distancia.