Paul Samuelson Quotes
1915–2009 United States
Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist. He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
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Also known as: Paul A. Samuelson, Samuelson, Paul
Random Paul Samuelson quote
45 quotes
A scientist earns the only mortality worth having. Of the good scholar we say: Rex numquam moritur.
Science is not art. Yet, despite the lack of complete identity between art and science, there is much in common among different creative processes.
Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947)
Arrow’s general impossibility theorem does not disprove the existence of the Bergsonian social welfare function, neither does it disprove the existence of the Benthamite hedonistic function.
As old problems are conquered, we expect to turn up new problems. A discipline lives on its unsolvved problems; and so, for better or worse, economics is likely to be a lively subject for as many years ahead as man can see.
The museums of science are replete with fossils of species that could not last the course. The leading-coinciding-lagging indicators might be buried forever in old footnotes. But occasionally Sleeping Beauty is brought back to life by the kiss of a new Prince Charming.
In every actuarial situation of mathematical probability, no matter how large the numbers in the sample, we are left with a finite sample: in the appropriate limit law of probability there will necessarily be left an epsilon of uncertainty even in so-called risk situations.
Markets are not perfect, which is true even for rationally regulated markets. Nevertheless, over the last thousand years every attempt to organize sizeable societies without important dependence on markets has generated its own failure ...
I think the acceptance of "mathematical expectation of utility" or its "arithmetic mean" was an unthinking carryover from the mathematical theory of the law of large numbers as applied to asymptotic processes.
Most of mainstream economics is not "big-picture economics." Our journals and textbooks are full of the grimy details about inventory cycles or the deadweight losses incident to taxes and regulation. Besides, most big pictures are wrong.
I think Marshall was a great economist, but he was a potentially much greater economist than he actually was. It was not that he was lazy, but his health was not good, and he worked in miniature.
The General Theory caught most economists under the age of 35 with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attacking and decimating an isolated tribe of south sea islanders. Economists beyond 50 turned out to be quite immune to the ailment. With time, most economists in between began to run the fever, often without knowing or admitting their condition.
How do we measure the net national product, NNP? The general idea is simple. Figure 10-1 shows the circular flow of dollar spending in an economy with no government and no accumulation of capital or net saving going on.
However, one last caution. What has happened in Japan for 12 long years warns that an affluent society like America’s might not be immune to a self de-energization of its optimism and free spending. Do not bet on worst case scenarios. But do not ignore them completely either.
Just as Hegel is said to have understood his philosophy for the first time when he read its French translation, Vilfredo Pareto could have learned what it was he meant exactly to say when he read Bergson's 1938 classic.
Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947)
Specialization and trade are the key to high living standards. By specializing, people can become highly productive in a very narrow field of expertise. People can then trade their specialized goods for others’ products, vastly increasing the range and quality of consumption and having the potential to raise everyone’s living standards.
I used to joke to Bob Solow that the distance between me and Joan Robinson is less than the distance between Joan Robinson and me. His reply was, “You’ll never convince her of that.” Still one lives in hope.
Moral: free markets do not stabilize themselves. Zero regulating is vastly suboptimal to rational regulating. Libertarianism is its own worst enemy!
The vogue of vulgar and vague Coaseism, one hypothesizes, is strongest among libertarians and other devotees of laissez-faire who believe to find in it ammunition against regulation and voters' activism. Whether this hypothesis is close to or wide off the mark is of no importance. What does matter is how much deadweight-loss obtains in real life.
Needless to say, the partial equilibrium assumptions involved in the domestic demand schedules and the neglect of aggregative relations constitute a serious defect of such a model except as a rough first approximation to the answers in especially favorable cases. Good economic theory will recognize these limitations rather than be predisposed to neglect them.
An American economist of two generations ago, H. J. Davenport, who was the best friend Thorstein Veblen ever had (Veblen actually lived for a time in Davenport’s coal cellar) once said: “There is no reason why theoretical economics should be a monopoly of the reactionaries.” All my life I have tried to take this warning to heart, and I dare call it to your favorable attention.