Skip to content

To find a substitute for laboratory experiments, economists pay close attention to the natural experiments offered by history.

— Greg Mankiw Principles of Economics (1998)

Another quote →

Topics

History

More quotes by Greg Mankiw

Despite its flaws, Peddling Prosperity has much to recommend it. There is no book written for a lay audience that explains the economics profession with more perception or clarity than this one.

Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated not by an all-powerful dictator but through the combined actions of millions of households and firms.

Principles of Economics (1998)

Microeconomics and macroeconomics are closely intertwined. Because changes in the overall economy arise from the decisions of millions of individuals, it is impossible to understand macroeconomic developments without considering the associated microeconomic decisions.

Principles of Economics (1998)

Although Keynes’s General Theory provides the foundation for much of our current understanding of economic fluctuations, it is important to remember that classical economics provides the right answers to many fundamental questions.

It is too early to say there is a consensus about how all these topics fit together. Yet one can say that the new classical challenge has been met: Keynesian economics has been reincarnated into a body with firm microeconomic muscle.

All Greg Mankiw quotes →

You may also like

A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Greg Mankiw (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.