Applied Economics Quotes

Studying economics is not a good preparation for dealing with it.

We judge economics by what it can produce. As such, economics is rather more like engineering than physics: more practical than spiritual.

Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.

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

I don't care very much for the People Magazine approach to applied economics.

I've felt for some time that economics needs to be taught differently by economists who actually have had experience making a payroll or investing on Wall Street. When economics is taught by pure academics, watch out.

Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful results.

Any econometrician who wants to see practical application of his science will be highly concerned with applications to economic planning at the national level.

When I was a graduate student, estimating and interpreting distributed lags topped the agenda of macroeconomists and other applied economists.

I began my career as an economics professor but became frustrated because the economic theories I taught in the classroom didn't have any meaning in the lives of poor people I saw all around me. I decided to turn away from the textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence.