18 quotes
Regulation may be actively sought by an industry, or it may be thrust upon it.
Unexpected changes, on the contrary, lead to windfall gains or losses for those who are in the right or wrong places at a given time.
The Theory of Price (1946)
Economics, I thus believe, has a useful past, a past that is useful in dealing with the future.
One should hardly have to tell academicians that information is a valuable resource: knowledge is power. And yet this occupies a slum dwelling in the town of economics. Mostly it is ignored.
Footnotes are not an occasional token of respect for an obsolete and purposeless tradition. It will come as a shock to many, I am sure, even to realize that references can be checked.
The Intellectual and the Marketplace (1965)
The essence of scientific progress is to edge up this ladder from ignorance to knowledge, and it is complicated by the fact that the ladder keeps getting longer!
The Theory of Price (1946)
Economists are neither distinctively good nor bad, no more or less virtuous or brave or generous or faithful than the sum of mankind, and certainly no more modest.
Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (1988)
Some important aspects of important aspects of economic organization take on a new meaning when they are considered from the viewpoint of the search of information.
The state --the machinery and power of the state-- is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries.
The user of a theory has a simpler task: his not to reason why, his but to sigh and try. If the right element in the diverse situations has been isolated, the theory will work: it will yield predictions better than those which can be reached with any alternative theory.
The Theory of Price (1946)
In the 1950s, I proposed the survivor method of determining the efficient sizes of enterprises, and worked on delivered price systems, vertical integration, and similar topics.
Prices instruct us on what people desire, but prices do not tell us why those things are desired. Our desires are accepted as a datum by economists: desires are some amalgam of biological needs, the cultural values of the society in which we grow up, and our own experiments.
The Theory of Price (1946)
I define the subject matter of the history of economics to be economics which is not read to master present-day economics (although possibly it is read to learn the path by which we have reached the present).
Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic phenomena.
The Economist as Preacher and Other Essays (1982)
A rational man must be guided by the incentive system within which he operates. No matter what his own personal desires, he must be discouraged from certain activities if they carry penalties and attracted toward others if they carry large rewards. The carrot and the stick guide scientists and politicians as well as donkeys.
For consumers, the price message is clear: economize on goods that are in short supply relative to demand, and splurge on those in ample supply: eat raspberries in summer, and ski in winter. But the accommodating is not done just by consumers: resorts in the Caribbean are much cheaper in July than in January, precisely because people are not so eager to vacation in hot, humid places.
The Theory of Price (1946)
Dr. Smith and all of his sensible disciples have believed that people would not strive to do anything well unless there were a reasonable measure of agreement between the success of their efforts and the rewards they would receive.
Lacking education, lacking a tenacity of purpose, lacking a willingness to work hard, he will not be an object of employers' competition. What leader of Negro thought is fostering the ancient virtues of diligence and honesty and loyalty? It is so much easier to seek quotas for Negroes?