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According to a frequently cited definition, economics is the study of “best use of scarce resources.” The definition is incomplete. “Second best” use of resources, and outright wasteful uses, have equal claim to attention. They are the other side of the coin.

— Tjalling Koopmans

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More quotes by Tjalling Koopmans

One is led to conclude that economics as a scientific discipline is still somewhat hanging in the air.

Three Essays (1957)

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

We look upon economic theory as a sequence of conceptual models that seek to express in simplified form different aspects of an always more complicated reality.

Three Essays (1957)

Optimizing responses of economic agents are simultaneously feasible only if the proper prices are already known to them. But these prices must somehow themselves be the result of the same responses.

If evolutionary selection is the basis for a belief in profit maximization, 'then we should postulate that basis itself and not the profit maximization which it implies in certain circumstances.

Three Essays (1957)

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