Quotes About Economists

When all economists are equally open-minded and are willing to incorporate important variables in their work, even if the rational model says those variables are supposedly irrelevant, the field of behavioral economics will disappear. All economics will be as behavioral as it needs to be. And those who have been stubbornly clinging to an imaginary world that consists only of Econs will be waving a white flag, rather than an invisible hand.

Posiblemente lo más diferenciador sea que no todos los investigadores en ciencias humanas y sociales abrazan el principio de individualismo metodológico tan querido por los economistas[118

The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.

The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs ' like the health effects of air and water pollution.

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

When you poll all of the economists, uh, across America that I think are intellectually honest they would all, or maybe not all, but 95% of them 96% of them would say you know we really have got a powerful economy.

but economists were still very skilled at ignoring outside criticisms of their field, and now they forged on contradicting themselves as confidently as ever.

most economists are still working within the empty-world model of economics.

You always know economists are in deep shit when they start talking about trust and value. Usually when you say fundamentals to them they're like interest rates and price of gold.

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

A recognition of the impossibility of exact perfection lay behind the work of a few economists, such as Herbert Simon's satisficing, Ronald Coase's transaction costs, George Shackle's and Israel Kirzner's reaffirmation of the old Yogi Berra jest: it's hard to predict, especially about the future.

Value is subjective, as the Austrian economists say. We make value by our thinking, and our thinking is notoriously unpredictable.

Beware of economists who hide assumptions.

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.

Economists want their discipline to be a science, and they have nailed down a few precepts, but many of their debates are still clouded by ideology.

I don't think we should run government based on economists' predictions.

When better business decisions are made, economists won't make them.

Question: Why does anyone bother to listen to economists anymore? The profession has become an embarrassment, and the most respected economists have shown themselves to have as much predictive power as a deck of tarot cards.

Accountants and economists are natural enemies. One views trees, the other forests, and the visions are usually at odds, as they should be.

Economists whose common sense had not been completely destroyed by their theories rejected the drastic cure of destroying the existing economy in order to rebuild it in the correct proportions.

The government employs scientists of many varieties in technical capacities, from estimating the environmental toxicity of a chemical to the structural soundness of a bridge. But when it comes to forming policies, these scientists and, especially, behavioral scientists are rarely at the table with the lawyers and the economists.

economists like Sachs view reality from a sanitary thirty-thousand-foot distance, not at a grassroots level where social entrepreneurs sweat over spreadsheets. The amazing gains in global poverty alleviation are primarily the result of mushroom explosions in the economies of India and China. Very little change has taken place in sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America.

A company can sustain a premium price only if it offers something that is both unique and valuable to its customers. Apple's hot, must-have gadgets have commanded premium prices. Ditto for the high-speed Madrid-to-Barcelona train and the trucks Paccar creates for owner-operators. Create more buyer value and you raise what economists call willingness to pay (WTP), the mechanism that makes it possible for a company to charge a higher price relative to rival offerings.

Some economists estimate that for every family that goes bankrupt, there are about 15 more who are in the same amount of financial trouble and would profit from bankruptcy but just haven't filed.