88 quotes
[The theory of the firm] is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a ‘firm’ whose product is ‘utility’.
At the opposite pole from the gift is tribute - that is, a grant made out of fear and under threat. A threat is a statement of the form "you do something that I want or I will do something that you do not want.
Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.
Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals.
p. 26 quoted in: Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations - Volume 1 (1999)
Knowledge exists in minds, not in books. Before what has been found can be used by practitioners, someone must organize it, integrate it, extract the message
to Kenneth Boulding (1976)
The social system tends to be dominated by images... especially of the future, which act cybernetically, constantly guided by perceived divergences between the real and the ideal
p. vii as cited by Debora Hammond (1995)
Political conflict rests to a very large extent on a universal ignorance of consequences, as the people who are benefited by any particular act or policy are rarely those who struggled for it, and the people who are injured are rarely those who opposed it.
Without the heroic, man has no meaning; without the economic, he has no sense. Economic man is most likely to be economic woman — a good wife, pulling the coat tails of her heroic husband, checking his extravagances of speech and action with words of caution and good sense. But without the heroic coat tails to pull, life for both of them would be dull and savorless indeed.
[You know you are in a part of the economy dealing with grants instead of exchange when] A gives B something and B does not give A anything in the way of an economic good.
p. i as cited in: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey (2013)
[There will be movement toward] behavioral economics... [which] involves study of those aspects of men’s images, or cognitive and affective structures that are more relevant to economic decisions.
Kenneth Boulding (1958)
The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. It is the great task of human knowledge to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past which can be projected into the future as realistic images.
Kenneth Boulding in the foreword of: Fred Polak (1972)
[The consumer is] the supreme mover of economic order... for whom all goods are made and towards whom all economic activity is directed.
[Boulding once said, in response to a forecast that someday every American would be earning $100,000 per year] So what? Someone will still have to take out the garbage.
to Kenneth Boulding in: Donella Meadows (1989)
The discounting presumably is to be done for each period of time at that rate of interest which represents the alternative cost of employing capital in the occupation in question; that is, at the rate which the entrepreneur could obtain in other investments
p. 793 cited in: Pedro Garcia Duarte (2010)
If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products.
Every culture, or subculture, is defined by a set of common values, that is, generally agreed upon preferences. Without a core of common values a culture cannot exist, and we classify society into cultures and subcultures precisely because it is possible to identify groups who have common values.
Nothing fails like success, because we do not learn anything from it. We only learn from failure, but we do not always learn the right things from failure. If there is a failure of expectations, that is, if the messages that we receive are not the same as those we expected, we can make three possible inferences.
There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.
A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.
Kenneth Boulding (1966)
It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, “Economics is what economists do,” and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.