Economist Quotations

Becoming an economist was not a childhood dream of mine.

The intriguing aspect of food charges on airlines is that they create the perfect laboratory for any economist who wishes to study the question of how to price a good that possesses, by universal consensus, absolutely no objective value.

In the 40 years I've been working as an economist and investor, I have never seen such a disconnect between the asset market and the economic reality... Asset markets are in the sky, and the economy of the ordinary people is in the dumps, where their real incomes adjusted for inflation are going down and asset markets are going up.

I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.

I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.

If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it wouldn't be a bad thing.

As an economist, I'm aware that life is full of trade offs.

As many will remember, a respected Army Corps economist filed a whistleblower complaint about the Corps' use of faulty data to justify lock and dam expansion.

I need something to fall back on if fame doesn't work. I'll have to become an economist or something.

I never understand why 'economist makes forecast' is ever a headline. Whether the economist in question is from the International Monetary Fund, a City forecasting group or the Treasury - a forecast is still not news.

I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank's name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate.

I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

Our biggest challenge is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don't have anything useful to say.

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere.

In my wide travels across the world and my meetings with various heads of states, be that Africa or South Asia, Singapore or in high level meetings in the U.S., U.K. or Japan, one common mention is about Dr. Singh's extraordinary reputation as a Wise Man, an outstanding Economist and a fine Gentleman.

You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure.

The public is even more pessimistic about the economy than even the most bearish economists are.

You do not have to be an economist to know that putting up the cost of employing someone is a pretty barking thing to do when you're trying to get out of a recession.

Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.

I'm Harvard-educated; I'm an economist by training. I'm an author, a journalist, as well as being active in community development.

I'm an economist by training. I don't really work as an economist. I only worked briefly as an economist.

If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.

It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.

We're asking that this be done, and I don't think we have much choice. The economy seems to be going along nicely now. But if you ask any economist what's the No. 1 thing that could stop it, it's oil prices.

Economists are about as useful as astrologers in predicting the future (and, like astrologers, they never let failure on one occasion diminish certitude on the next).

When you're an economist trained in conceptual stuff, you tend to be less intuitive. You fall back on this conceptual framework that the profession has invested a lot of time in.

What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

Olsen has done research in government housing programs for almost his entire career, for decades, and he probably knows more about government housing programs than any economist in the country.

New home sales surprised the experts. The Commerce Department said that new home sales were up by 13.8% for March, and last week used home sales were up as well. One economist says that the housing market still has a lot of room to maneuver and that a slump is more like a 'soft landing' for 2006. The 30-year mortgage is averaging 6.49% nationwide.

Politicians need to justify what they're doing, so they'll get some economist to put together a study that put out a job-creation figure that depends on multiplier effects and a lot of economic variables to come through,

He's a very well trained economist like Greenspan...so I don't think there will be a problem with the transition.

It had the effect that any economist would have told you. To believe the laws of economic gravity have changed over time is wrong.

I think it will have some effect, ... It depends on which economist you read as to how much.

Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.

My colleague Bill Keegan has written a very short book ('Saving the World?') on an unlikely topic - he is the first economist to try to rehabilitate Gordon Brown.

Well, I started out in the Federal Reserve as a young economist and spent about five years in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

You don't need an economist to tell you how disastrous they look.

Fifty-four percent of hiring managers surveyed by CareerBuilder.com say they will increase their staffs in the coming year while only 9 percent will decrease them. After creating over 2 million jobs in 2005, the U.S. is expected to add 2 million more in 2006, according to economist estimates.

What our economist thinks at this point is that we have probably seen the last of interest rate hikes by the Fed, which could be a positive thing for the transportation sector,

Brilliance as an economist is not a substitute for political acumen. To be a successful prime minister, you need loads of political acumen. Manmohan Singh needs to acquire this -- fast.

Edgeworth has been the foremost economist in England during the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

the most influential political economist of the last generation.

Any economist will tell you that in terms of predictive power, there's no comparison. In a given investment category, if you're to pick a single factor to go on, you're going to do better in a fund with lower costs.

Almost every economist agrees that the American health care system is unsustainable. Medical care is so expensive that it is busting all of our budgets - government, business, and personal. Eventually, the medical price bubble will pop. What, then, are the alternatives?

By historical comparison, there's not an economist on the street that can call housing weak right now.

I'm not going to put my lot in with economists.

Please find me a one-armed economist so we will not always hear, "On the other hand..."

I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life.

I guess economists, it’s a bit like scientists, you have definitely fewer women in that field,

All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.

The more consistently Austrian School an economist is, the better a writer he will be.

I read 'Time', 'Newsweek' and 'The Economist'.

Economists have much to be humble about.

In order to be an economist these days, you have to participate in this fairytale that somehow we can recover and still make the banks rich. And it is a fairytale.

The economist rarely examines the presuppositions of the models with which he works. The economist simply commences with individuals as evaluating, choosing, and acting units. This starting point for analysis necessarily draws attention to the choice or decision environment for the individuals who must make selections from among the alternatives.

It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.

The point of studying economics is so as not to be fooled by economists.

When I meet people on airplanes and they find out I'm an economist, they usually ask about stock tips.

In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.

Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.

Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.

The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.

Economists don't usually make good speculators, because they think too much.

There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

My ma is an economist. My dad is a software engineer.

I am not and should not be considered an economist.

Most economists, including me, agree that longevity insurance would make sense for a lot of people.

One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions.

With various people complaining about "price gouging... economist Walter Williams has coined a new term: "Tax gouging." But government is never accused of either "greed" or "gouging" not even when they bulldoze people's homes in order to turn the land over to businesses that will pay more taxes.

The economists will have to revise their theories of value.

An economist is a man that can tell you . . . what can happen under any given condition, and his guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's too.

I am not an economist. I am an honest man!

As an economist, whenever I hear the word shortage I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually price control.

Every company that has an economist working for him has one employee too many.