David Autor Quotes

Free markets work better when information is available.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization.

The thing about markets, and I think the thing people don't understand about that, is markets are not kind, but they're very efficient. So when the marketplace determines an inefficiency in the system, it corrects that, and a market system that's left alone will reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.

Markets are a good thing, and they are the best way of ensuring we have fairness.

We use competitive markets to arrange for delivery of our food supply.

I had always been interested in markets - specifically, the theory that in financial markets, goods will trade at a fair value only when everyone has access to the same information.

An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention.

The market is not an invention of capitalism …. It is an invention of civilization.

We should rely on the markets to move on their own.

The pharma pricing system was not built on the idea of consumer engagement. It was built... on market efficiencies. It was not built on the premise of consumerism.

We are headed toward 'perfect capitalism,' when the laws of supply and demand become exact, because everyone knows everything about a product, service or customer. We will know precisely where the supply curve meets the demand curve, which will make the marketplace vastly more efficient.

Competition drives growth in the end as opposed to monopolies.

Markets are the best way to allocate resources.

I've always believed that competition is good for consumers and good for businesses.

I strongly believe that for the steel prices to be market-driven, without distortions, we need to substantially increase the production capacity.

What I have done is to show the importance for the working of the economic system of what may be termed the institutional structure of production.

The main reason why it is profitable to establish a firm would seem to be that there is a cost of using the price mechanism. The most obvious cost of 'organizing' production through the price mechanism is that of discovering what the relevant prices are.

Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum of value. I have no doubt we can buy brass cannon at market cheaper than we could make iron ones.

Markets are self-regulating only because some brave investors are prepared to bet against the market trend.

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

The free market is the most efficient for utilizing resources and responding to needs, but there are many human needs which find no place on the market.

Markets can do certain things, but markets cannot do other things

The one thing about markets is that they do not give any advance notice. If they did, they would be arbitraged away.

Whoever claims that economic competition represents "survival of the fittest" in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics…. The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.