My very first publication was an estimator - this was a statistical procedure - a kind of invention. My father got a patent and started a business; it wasn't successful, but maybe I have some of him in me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the author's early beginnings in innovation and the influence of a parent despite initial failure.
In this quote, Robert J. Shiller discusses his early venture into the world of invention through a statistical estimator that his father patented. While the business was not successful, he acknowledges the impact of his father’s entrepreneurial spirit on his own life, suggesting that the essence of that initial attempt and the striving for innovation lives on within him, illustrating the connection between familial influence and personal ambition.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a business workshop to inspire entrepreneurs to embrace both their successes and failures.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.
Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.
Fame is a by-product. It's not a goal. What matters is loving your work and loving what you do
Those that spend the most effort in search of shortcuts are often the most disappointed and the least successful.
I would trade all the individual awards I've won for a World Cup.
Success is a result of consistent practice of winning skills and actions. There is nothing miraculous about the process. There is no luck involved.
Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It's really sad.
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