James Meade Quotes

What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.

You read [Bill ] Maher's book, and he didn't take Econ 101. All his arguments about gasoline, it's not that they're right or wrong - they're just not informed.

Economics is a very difficult subject. I've compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running.

Microeconomics is the study of how specific choices made by businesses, consumers and governments affect the markets for different goods and services. For example, a microeconomist might examine how price changes affect sales of apples relative to oranges.

At the beginning of my sophomore year at Princeton University, I took my first economics course; our textbook was the first edition of Samuelson's 'Economics: An Introductory Analysis.'

Producer's Surplus is a convenient name for the genus of which the rent of land is the leading species.

The difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics is a bit like the difference between biology and medicine. Knowing that certain genes increase the risk of cancer is relatively easy. Figuring out exactly which people will get sick, or how to cure them, is a lot more complicated.

I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium.

I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging, particularly to someone with taste and talent for theoretical reasoning and quantitative analysis.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

In Oxford before the war, I had, with this interest in mind, written a short textbook entitled, An Introduction to Economic Analysis and Policy. It was now my intention to rewrite this work.

I am an economist, not an astrologer.

My interest in economics has always been in the whole corpus of economic theory, the interrelationships between the various fields of theory and their relevance for the formulation of economic policy.

The media simply does not understand Econ 101.

Economics has paid a terrible price for its dalliances with the Keynesian and neoclassical theories.

We have learned that the various schools of [economic] thought all have important elements of truth in them. But none of them is by itself a sufficient explanation of what goes on in the economy.

The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.

Supply creates its own demand

Will the politicians of all countries one day understand that it is as useless to shake one's fist at economics as it was for Xerxes to flog the sea--that it is far better to set to work to study this new science, born within the last fifty years, which they have been foolish enough to ignore or never to learn?

If you think about the amount of critical thinking that has come into the field of economics, two universities have dominated the landscape in my life: Chicago and Harvard.

I am a trained economist.

I had never taken any economics. I literally didn't know what it was. I thought it was just about the study of money.

I studied economics with some teachers from ESADE. It's a really good school here in Spain. They helped me to understand a little about numbers, stats, economics, etc.

I never, never in my life took a course in economics.

Microeconomics: The study of who has the money and how I can get my hands on it.Macroeconomics: The study of which government agency has the gun, and how we can get our hands on it.