Akerlof Quotes & Sayings

I've always been a macroeconomist. That's what I teach. And I guess that's what I've been concerned with ever since I've been very young. — George Akerlof

In the late 1960s, the New Classical economists saw the same weaknesses in the microfoundations of macroeconomics that have motivated me. They hated its lack of rigor. And they sacked it. — George Akerlof

The idea is that in any situation, people have a notion as to who they are and how they should behave. And if you don't behave according to your identity, you pay a cost. — George Akerlof

Soon shall thy arm, UNCONQUER'D STEAM! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying-chariot through the fields of air. — Erasmus Darwin

Worst People Are the best TEACHERS. — Ujas Soni

It is a wonderful and unexpected honor to receive the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Receiving this prize with Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, whose work I have learned from and admired, makes it even more gratifying. — Michael Spence

I think what Bob Shiller and I are doing is we're focusing on macroeconomics and the role of psychology in macroeconomics. — George Akerlof

I would never have been a good reporter because I am not accurate regarding facts. — George Akerlof

Keynesian economics has always been needed. — George Akerlof

My father was a chemist on the Yale faculty, my mother a housewife. — George Akerlof

[A]n important new book ... Professor Akerlof and Rachel Kranton have invented Identity Economics. — Daniel Finkelstein

When men do all the outside work, they contribute on average about 10 percent of housework. But as their share of outside work falls, their share of housework rises to no more than 37 percent. — George Akerlof

In New Classical theory, periods of declining employment - business cycle downturns - may be caused by an unexpected decline in aggregate demand, which leaves workers mistakenly holding out for nominal wages that exceed the new market-clearing level. — George Akerlof

In a well-known 1996 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Akerlof explained, using the language of modern economics, why the sexual revolution - contrary to common prediction, especially prediction by those in and out of the Church who wanted the teaching on birth control changed - had led to an increase in both illegitimacy and abortion.4 — Mary Eberstadt

The ice on the next pane was already disturbed, had been wiped away by someone recently. Beads of condensation stood like tiny lenses warping the light. He rubbed the glass and knew what had happened. He saw the woman inside with the auburn hair that she sometimes kept in a bun. This was not his wife. This was someone who wanted that, wanted him like that. 'Hello?' Troy turned toward the voice. — Hugh Howey

Don't be confused by what looks like luck to you. Lucky people don't make successful people; people who completely commit themselves to success seem to get lucky in life. — Grant Cardone

The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him ... — C.S. Lewis

My Swedish grandmother was the daughter of a dairy farmer who lived near Hedemora. My Swedish grandfather worked as a clerk for the Swedish railways in the Stockholm station. — George Akerlof

The whole intention of empirical economics is to force theory down to Earth. — George Akerlof

Some time ago a little-known Scottish philosopher wrote a book on what makes nations succeed and what makes them fail. The Wealth of Nations is still being read today. With the same perspicacity and with the same broad historical perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have retackled this same question for our own times. Two centuries from now our great-great- ... -great grandchildren will be, similarly, reading Why Nations Fail. — George Akerlof

It is definitely annoying that straight (and white, for that matter) is the default, and that the only people who have to think about their identity are the ones who don't fit that mold. Straight people really should have to come out, and the more awkward it is, the better. Awkwardness should be a requirement. — Becky Albertalli

Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history. — Otto Von Bismarck

Parents don't take a baby's temperature to decide whether the room is too warm; likewise, for global warming, we need a story that spurs us to do what is necessary. — George Akerlof

When you give chief executives too much compensation in stock options, they concentrate too much on the stock price, and there is a perverse incentive to raise the stock price, particularly when the chief executive wants to exercise his own options. — George Akerlof

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. — Robert Green Ingersoll

The failure of credit markets is one of the major reasons for underdevelopment. — George Akerlof

Economic theorists, like French chefs in regard to food, have developed stylized models whose ingredients are limited by some unwritten rules. Just as traditional French cooking does not use seaweed or raw fish, so neoclassical models do not make assumptions derived from psychology, anthropology, or sociology. I disagree with any rules that limit the nature of the ingredients in economic models. — George Akerlof

The only way we are going to ameliorate pressing social needs is through public intervention. — George Akerlof

My mother, whose interest in chemistry was rather minimal, nevertheless went to graduate school in the subject and married my father, for whom it was as important as life itself. — George Akerlof

Prior to the early 1960s, economic theorists rarely constructed models customized to capture unique institutions or specific market characteristics. — George Akerlof

My brother Carl became a physicist; I became an economist. — George Akerlof