Occupation: Economist Birth: May 15, 1915 Death: December 13, 2009
I'm not sure most of the people that get caught up in the middle of a bubble can be described as irrational. It seems pretty rational to buy a house ….
It isn't that greed's increased. What's increased is the realization that you've got a free field to reach out for what you'd like to do..
The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those h….
There is something in people; you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct… I tell people investing should be dull. It shouldn't be exc….
An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed..
Reasonable men are not reasonable when you're in the bubbles which have characterized capitalism since the beginning of time..
We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race..
Even if this advice to portfolio decision makers to drop dead is good advice, it obviously is not counsel that will be eagerly followed. Few people w….
Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U….
Economists have much to be humble about..
Suppose it was demonstrated that one out of twenty alcoholics could learn to become a moderate social drinker. The experienced clinician would answer….
You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life..
When the economy was going up, [Milton Friedman and I] both gave the same advice, and when the economy was going down, we gave the same advice. But i….
The recent market run-up that appreciated run-of-the- mill shares also chanced to send up those token gold holdings. Pure luck, undeserved and unlike….
Two factors explain our success. One, MIT's renaissance after World War II as a federally supported research resource. Two, the mathematical revoluti….
I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a ….
Funeral by funeral, theory advances..
What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him fr….
Thousands of important and intelligent men have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe it even after it was expla….
That's what I would like to do until the end of time, to go on scribbling my articles on the third floor of the Sloan Building, in between playing te….
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago..