George Stigler Quotes

Even before I came to Chicago, I had gotten interested in the existence of dispersion of prices under conditions which economic theory said would yield a single price.

When you talk about the economic process of a society, sometimes we separate it into two stories. One is about monetary variables. But then, we very often assume the underlying arrangement, the other variable, is 'perfect competition,' which means people do whatever they are supposed to do.

Markets work well with goods that economists call private goods.

You want supply to always be full, and you use price to basically either bring more supply on or get more supply off, or get more demand in the system or get some demand out.

The first principle of the market economy is that it is comprised of many small buyers and sellers, which implies a substantial degree of equity. Another fundamental market principle is that costs are internalized in the producer's price.

Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.

It's a market economy. Apparently the demand for great coaches exceeds the supply, so of course the price of good coaches is going to be high.

To economists, prices serve as crucial signals to producers and consumers. In a regulated market, the state sets prices high enough for private companies to cover their costs and earn a guaranteed profit for their investors. But in a deregulated market, prices should vary with demand and supply.

Value is what people are willing to pay for it.

A common price isn't the lowest price. It will most obviously be the highest price.

'Perfect competition' is considered both the ideal and the default state in Economics 101. So-called perfectly competitive markets achieve equilibrium when producer supply meets consumer demand.

With competition, prices tend to be uniform; with monopoly, prices are uniformly high.

Every thing receives a value from its use, and the Value is raised [or lowered], according to its Quality, Quantity and Demand.

The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice

As much as I'd love to give everybody a really cheap option, it's just simply not possible in certain sorts of extreme events... I guarantee that our strategy on surge pricing is the optimal way to get as many people home as possible.

Rent control created deadweight loss.

Everybody's doing it. In capitalism, you try to get the highest price you can for a product.

Increases in output generally lead to lower prices, not higher prices.

As an economist, whenever I hear the word shortage I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually price control.

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price.

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

There is a supply for every demand.

Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it's a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.

A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.

But my shift to the serious study of economics gradually weakened my belief in Major Douglas's A+B theorem, which was replaced in my thought by the expression MV = PT.