#economists

Although economists have studied the sensitivity of import and export volumes to changes in the exchange rate, there is still much uncertainty about just how much the dollar must change to bring about any given reduction in our trade deficit. ↗

— Martin Feldstein

#although #any #bring #change #changes

Thirty years ago, many economists argued that inflation was a kind of minor inconvenience and that the cost of reducing inflation was too high a price to pay. No one would make those arguments today. ↗

— Martin Feldstein

#argued #cost #economists #high #inconvenience

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost. ↗

— Vivienne Westwood

#cost #cover #divorced #economics #economists

Most economists are accustomed to treating companies as idyllic places where everyone is devoted to a common goal: making as much money as possible. In the real world, that’s not how things work at all. Companies aren’t big happy families where everyone plays together nicely. Rather, most workplaces are made up of fiefdoms where executives compete for power and credit, often in hidden skirmishes that make their own performances appear superior and their rivals’ seem worse. Divisions compete for resources and sabotage each other to steal glory. Bosses pit their subordinates against one another so that no one can mount a coup. Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war. Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because they have routines – habits – that create truces that allow everyone to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done. ↗

— Charles Duhigg

#economists #workplace #business

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

— Peter Lynch

#bad thing #economists #end #laid #thing

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#conclusion #economists #end #laid #never

Over the last decade, economists seemed to share a broad consensus about economic policy, with the old splits between monetarists and Keynesians apparently being settled by events. But the Great Recession of the last two years has changed everything. ↗

— Gavyn Davies

#apparently #being #between #broad #changed