Quotes About Economic theory

Milton Friedman. Friedman had a solid MV = PQ doctrine from which he deviated very little all his life. By the way, he's about as smart a guy as you'll meet. He's as persuasive as you hope not to meet.

People who intend to serve only the public interest are led by an invisible hand to serve private interests which was no part of their intention.

Basic economic theory tells us that if you want something that's both rare and valuable, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return—this is Supply and Demand 101.

Los economistas han entendido durante siglos que cuando los precios están altos, las personas tienden a comprar menos que cuando los precios están bajos. Sin embargo, incluso hoy, muchos no entienden las múltiples implicaciones de ese simple hecho.

From 1776 to 1976 just five books reigned over economics in nearly unbroken succession: Smith's Wealth of Nations, Ricardo's Principles, Mill's Principles, Marshall's Principles, and Samuelson's Economics. What they lack in imaginative titles, they make up in endurance.

The intellectual case for planning was never very strong. Keynes, as we have seen, regarded economic planning much as he did pure market theory: in order to succeed, both required impossibly perfect data.

Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.

The power in capitalism must not be mindless. Unless it is combined with knowledge, mere economic power or money is fruitless. Enterprise involves memory of the past and anticipation of the future, and it is creative. It is not a simple incentive system of rewards and punishments, of carrots and sticks. It is an information system, and it is governed less by economic theory as we know it than by information theory.

An economics of systems only-an economics of markets but not of men-is fatally flawed.

The iron law of wages.

En teoría el impuesto era pagado por los productores de los artículos afectados, pero en la práctica recaía sobre los consumidores, pues los productores se limitaban a agregar el impuesto a sus precios. Incluso el vaso de cerveza o whisky que consumía o cada pipa que fumaba estaban sujetos a impuestos. Como lo dijo Burns, su negocio era «oprimir al publicano y al pecador con las ruedas despiadadas de los impuestos interiores».

Pure monetary theory, however, cannot explain why in one country the inflationary process proceeds so much further or faster than in another.

Inflation', wrote Milton Friedman in a famous definition, 'is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.

As early as 1975 she had come up with a wonderful line about the Labour Party: "They've got the usual Socialist disease — they've run out of other people's money.

I picked economics at the end of my undergraduate time because it seemed to be a really nice combination of theory, including mathematical theory on one hand, and things that are quite practical that you can touch and see and feel. So I picked it, and I consciously thought of it as an experiment to see if I liked it. And it worked.

My job was to teach the whole corpus of economic theory, but there were two subjects in which I was especially interested, namely, the economics of mass unemployment and international economics.

In macroeconomic theory, there is this argument that what the Fed does has no effect on unemployment, no effect on investment, no effect on the rate of GDP growth.

One grave and fundamental Keynesian error is to persist in regarding the interest rate as a contract rate on loans instead of the price spreads between stages of production. The former, as we have seen, is only the reflection of the latter.

It's essential that we understand things like the free-rider problem, but we also need to understand that, fortunately, humans are a little nicer than economists give them credit for. Some people actually leave money at roadside fruit stands; some people give money to NPR so we can listen to it.

The job of economic theorists is to prove theorems. The job of policy economists is to figure out which theorems to apply.

It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As an economist, I know that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area, as defined in economic theory.

Beneficial in theory, so-called free trade agreements far too often have been detrimental to the United States economy and the manufacturing sector that forms its central pillar.

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

However great an economic theory ma be, it is specific to its time and space. To apply it fruitfully, we require a good knowledge of the technological and institutional forces that characterize the particular markets, industries and countries that we are trying to analyze with the help of the theory.