Neoclassical Economics Quotes

Neoclassical economics insists that advertising cannot force consumers to buy anything they don't already want to buy. ~ Christopher Lasch

Neoclassical economics ... has uncovered important truths about the nature of money and markets because its fundamental model of rational self-interested human behavior is correct about 80% of the time. ~ Francis Fukuyama

This is known as the Pareto criterion and forms the basis for all judgements on social improvements in Neoclassical economics today. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

As Thorstein Veblen correctly surmised over a century ago, the failure of economics to become an evolutionary science is the product of the optimizing framework of the underlying paradigm, which is inherently antithetical to the process of evolutionary change. This is the primary reason why the neoclassical mantra that the economy must be perceived as the outcome of the decisions of utility-maximizing individuals must be squarely rejected. ~ Steve Keen

In this century, we are about to enter interplanetary civilization.
In order to survive, we need to go beyond neoclassical economics definition.
We define it as interplanomics. ~ Toba Beta

Neoclassical economics is precisely the theory one would expect a vastly complex system of international corporations, world markets, and interconnected currencies to create to sustain, justify, explain, and predict "itself." And classical economics, correspondingly, was a predictable expression of an earlier European capitalism. ~ Roger M. Keesing

Pirates are the very essence of profit maximising entrepreneurs described in neoclassical economics. Yet, whilst films such as 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' have gone a long way to popularise both pirates and outlaw behaviour, the truth of the matter is that piracy is illegal, and it kills. ~ Peter Middlebrook

There is danger in speaking so generally about "liberalism," a danger that has often plagued feminist debates. "Liberalism" is not a single position but a family of positions; Kantian liberalism is profoundly different from classical Utilitarian liberalism, and both of these from the Utilitarianism currently dominant in neoclassical economics. ~ Martha C. Nussbaum

From this failure to expunge the microeconomic foundations of neoclassical economics from post-Great Depression theory arose the "microfoundations of macroeconomics" debate, which ultimately led to a model in which the economy is viewed as a single utility-maximizing individual blessed with perfect knowledge of the future.
Fortunately, behavioral economics provides the beginnings of an alternative vision of how individuals operate in a market environment, while multi-agent modelling and network theory give us foundations for understanding group dynamics in a complex society. These approaches explicitly emphasize what neoclassical economics has evaded: that aggregation of heterogeneous individuals results in emergent properties of the group, which cannot be reduced to the behavior of any "representative individual." These approaches should replace neoclassical microeconomics completely. ~ Steve Keen

Economists Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison claim in their work The Corruption of Economics that industrialists toward the end of the 19th century may have intentionally created and promoted a new brand of economics (neoclassical) to divert public attention from the monopolization of nature. Neoclassical economics treats nature as capital - a resource to be exploited. ~ Martin Adams

An essential pedagogic step here is to relegate the teaching of mathematical methods in economics to mathematics departments. Any mathematical training in economics, if it occurs at all, should come after students have at the very least completed course work in basic calculus, algebra and differential equations (the last being one about which most economists are woefully ignorant). This simultaneously explains why neoclassical economists obsess too much about proofs and why non-neoclassical economists, like those in the Circuit School, experience such difficulties in translating excellent verbal ideas about credit creation into coherent dynamic models of a monetary production economy. ~ Steve Keen

If our goal in legislating against carbon releases is not simply punishing the West and its power companies but truly trying to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the main event will be in the developing world. We must use the smartest possible economics, and that means investing in China and India. ~ Gregg Easterbrook

There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool. ~ Bryan Caplan

By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute. ~ Matthew Desmond

At the simplest level, economics can better show us the consequences of our actions. Less simple are cases in which we don't have the knowledge to predict the full consequences. Global warming and climate change are examples. ~ Edmund Phelps

We're facing a danger that economics is rigorous deduction based upon faulty assumptions. Science after science gets that way from time to time. When it does, we're in real trouble. ~ W. Brian Arthur

In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, or by increasing production, or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible, by striving constantly to achieve a state of immobility. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

All of the problems we're facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It's called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn't work in reality. ~ Michele Bachmann

While there are certainly informational spillovers as ideas move from person to person, it is hard to see why in most instances they are not priced. Although it is possible to imagine examples such as the wheelbarrow where an idea cannot be used without revealing the secret, relatively few ideas are of this type. For copyrightable creations such as books, music, plays, movies and art, unpriced spillovers obviously play little role. A book, a CD or a work of art must be purchased before it can be used, and the creator is free to make use of his creation in the privacy of his home without revealing the secret to the public at large. Similarly with movies or plays. In all cases, the creation must effectively be purchased before the "secret" is revealed. ~ Michele Boldrin

My mother and my father taught me to look at the actual problem, not the face of it, not the veneer of it. So for me, I was never - I was impressed that it - racially, I was impressed, right, but now in America it's about economics, and it's been about economics, and honestly, everything's been about economics since I don't want to say the beginning of time, but it's been about economics for a long while. ~ Lupe Fiasco

Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

In November, Bettina [Moreira] presented him with a framed quotation by the biologist George Wald, who had won the Nobel fifty years ago. It read: What one really needs is not Nobel laureates but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that's how. Wanting it so bad that one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It's a consolation prize. What matters is love. 'What the hell do you want me to do with this?' said Chandra, who had come to a similar conclusion himself but would sooner be damned than tell Ms. Moreira this. ~ Rajeev Balasubramanyam

100 trillion is 100 followed by 12 zeroes ~ Andrew Ashwin

In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves. ~ Walter E. Williams

I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium. ~ Gerard Debreu

People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base. ~ Muhammad Yunus

And yet all the gold is in England, it is dug up from Portuguese and Spanish mines, but it flows by some occult power of attraction to the Tower of London." "Flows," Caroline repeated. "Flows, like a current." Sophie nodded. "And the English have grown so used to this that they use 'currency' as a synonym for money, as if no distinction need be observed between them. ~ Neal Stephenson

Economics played a role. Raleighs have gone from six fifty to nine dollars a carton, but there's a three-quarter cent coupon on the back. You can get all kinds of things with them, blenders, everything. I saved up enough one time and got Al Bumbry. ~ Earl Weaver

Let us imagine the lineaments of an economics of disorder, disequilibrium, and surprise that could explain and measure the contributions of entrepreneurs. Such an economics would begin with the Smithian mold of order and equilibrium. Smith himself spoke of property rights, free trade, sound currency, and modest taxation as conditions necessary for prosperity. He was right: disorder, disequilibrium, chaos, and noise inhibit the creative acts that engender growth. The ultimate physical entropy envisaged as the heat death of the universe, in its total disorder, affords no room for invention or surprise. But entrepreneurial disorder is not chaos or mere noise. Entrepreneurial disorder is some combination of order and upheaval that might be termed informative disorder. ~ George Gilder

Once everyone can enrich their souls for free, government subsidies for enrichment forfeit their rationale. To object, 'But most people don't use the Internet for spiritual enrichment' is actually a damaging admission that eager students are few and far between. Subsidized education's real aim isn't to make ideas and culture accessible to anyone who's interested, but to make them mandatory for everyone who *isn't* interested . . .

The rise of the Internet has two unsettling lessons . . . First: the humanist case for education subsidies is flimsy today because the Internet makes enlightenment practically free. Second: the humanist case for education subsidies was flimsy all along because the Internet proves low consumption of ideas and culture stems from apathy, not poverty or inconvenience. Behold: when the price of enlightenment drops to zero, remains embarrassingly scarce. ~ Bryan Caplan

No science and no analysis of the future consequences of various actions taken today can in itself tell us what to do. We need, in addition, to factor in what kind of future we value, and to what extent we care at all about the future compared to more immediate concerns here and now. The later aspect is usually modeled and economics by the so-called discount rate, which has played a prominent role in discussions of climate change on a decadal and centennial time scale, but hardly at all in the context of longer perspectives or the various radical technologies[.] We are less used to thinking about ethical issues on long time scales, so our intuitions trying to fail us and lead to paradoxes. These issues need to be resolved, because dodging the bullet would in my opinion be unacceptably irresponsible. ~ Olle Haggstrom

The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

As the saying goes, 'he who has a hammer sees everything as a nail'. If you approach a problem from a particular theoretical point of view, you will end up asking only certain questions and answering them in particular ways. You might be lucky, and the problem you are facing might be a 'nail' for which your 'hammer' is the most appropriate tool. But, more often than not, you will need to have an array of tools available to you.
You are bound to have your favourite theory. There is nothing wrong with using one or two more than others - we all do. But please don't be a man (or a woman) with a hammer - still less someone unaware that there are other tools available. To extend the analogy, use a Swiss army knife instead, with different tools for different tasks.­ ~ Ha-Joon Chang

My observation is China is thinking more as a global player than regionally, in both politics and economics. ~ Ban Ki-moon

My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people. ~ Bob Torres

We are confronted by the appearance of social institutions unintentionally created, vital for the welfare of society, which are not the result of reasoned planning ~ Carl Menger

I think that a true economics thinker or a Marxist thinker would make nonsense of my argument, although I have given massive seminars and no one has demolished it so far. I did think that this idea from an artisanal and trading perception of the auratic quality of goods when they are given character and inscription, made the stories of phantasmic wealth read more powerfully in the 18th and 19th centuries than the stories of Cinderella's wealth, because they are conjured out of nothing by these magic means. ~ Marina Warner

By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus. ~ Paul A. Baran

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds. ~ Kenny Smith

Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology. ~ Seth Klarman

When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature's gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart's desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature's gifts, to use them well. ~ Charles Eisenstein

It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles. ~ Paul A. Samuelson

The vision of personalised public services - meeting the individual needs of all our citizens - requires continuing reform in the way services are delivered ~ Gordon Brown

It is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it. ~ George Stigler