1,161 Quotes About Economics

Since 2000, we have seen a sharp decline in growth in output per person and its two components—growth in productivity and in hours of work per person—after corrections for the ups and downs of the business cycle. Because the basic data are unambiguous in registering a significant and deepening growth slowdown, the book’s title, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, has become a statement of fact.

Intuitively, many people imagine that humankind's upward climb in economic sophistication was a slow, steady journey, a linear progression from stone tools to DVD players. The actual story, pieced together by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and economists, is not at all like that. It is far more dramatic.

I didn't want to spend any more time inside the mind of an economist. It was dark and disturbing.

Economics is a political argument. It is not – and can never be – a science; there are no objective truths in economics that can be established independently of political, and frequently moral, judgements. Therefore, when faced with an economic argument, you must ask the age-old question ‘Cui bono?’ (Who benefits?), first made famous by the Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.

It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labor to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be much better for it in the interim.

It is not in the power of governments to increase the supply of one commodity without a corresponding restriction in the supply of other commodities more urgently demanded by consumers. The authority may reduce the price of one commodity only by raising the prices of others.

In the history of ideas, it's repeatedly happened that an idea, developed in one area for one purpose, finds an unexpected application elsewhere. Concepts developed purely for philosophy of mathematics turned out to be just what you needed to build a computer. Statistical formulae for understanding genetic change in biology are now applied in both economics and in programming.

Instead of wasting his time in Frankfurt and Tokyo, the finance minster should focus on Indian housewives and help them balance their budgets by reducing inflation and the fiscal deficit. Unfortunately, our housewives do not have access to the Nashik note printing press like our FM. The solution to India’s problems lie inside, not in wooing FII and FDI inflows.

In the end economics is about people ... And economic growth is about a better life for individuals - more choice, less fear, less toil and hardship. ... Yang Li tried factory work and decided that it wasn't for her. Now she says that 'I can close the salon whenever I want.' Economics is about Yang Li's choice.