Armchair Economist Quotes

“Most of economics can be summarized in four words: “People respond to incentives.” The rest is commentary.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“[Economics] is all about observing the world with genuine curiosity and admitting that it is full of mysteries”
― Steven E. Landsburg, Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life

“Selling is a painful necessity, buying is what makes it all worthwhile.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life

“Of course, ideas can always be misleading—but then so can numbers. Still, we advance by learning new ways to think, even if those ways are not infallible. Much”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“A low current stock price forecasts a low future price. If today’s price is low, there is a good reason to buy more (it’s cheap) and also a good reason to buy less (it’s likely to stay cheap). The two reasons cancel out and make “buying more when the price is low” no more attractive than “buying more when the price is high.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Why am I permitted to apply racial criteria when I select a spouse but not when I select a personal assistant?”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“According to the efficient markets hypothesis, no investment strategy based on the use of publicly available information can successfully beat the market.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Having raised the hope that investors can achieve unlimited wealth by observing simple correlations, I am sorry to report that most economists consider such a prospect quite unlikely.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Inefficiencies arise from missing markets.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“If you want to defend a policy, your task is not to demonstrate that it does some good, but that it does more good than harm.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“All mainstream economic models assume that people strive to consume more and to work less. All mainstream models judge an economic policy to be successful only when it helps people to accomplish at least one of those goals. By the standards of economics, a policy that does nothing but encourage people to work harder and die wealthy is a bad policy.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Strictly speaking, statistics never lie, but the truths they tell are often misinterpreted. This is particularly the case with economic statistics.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“The governing principle is precisely the same one that predicts behavior at the gas pump. When the price of gasoline is low, people choose to buy more gasoline. When the price of accidents (e.g., the probability of being killed or the expected medical bill) is low, people choose to have more accidents. You”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Logic matters. It leads us from simple ideas to surprising conclusions.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“discussion: Do I agree that with privilege comes responsibility? The answer is no. I believe that responsibilities arise when one undertakes them voluntarily. I also believe that in the absence of explicit contracts, people who lecture other people on their “responsibilities” are almost always up to no good.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Freakonomics is out to dazzle you with facts; The Armchair Economist is out to dazzle you with logic.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“Among college students, economics and philosophy majors have similar current incomes, but it’s the economics students who drive cars, because it’s the economics students who expect to have jobs someday.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life

“When I find a pair of pants I like, I buy a lot of them. Really a lot. Perhaps there’s something genetic here; I collect pants like my Uncle Morris collected meat. I do this because pants wear out. Is this part of a plot by the clothing manufacturers to keep us buying more? Some people think so. In my Sound and Fury file, I find an old (September 20, 1982) Ann Landers column about pantyhose manufacturers who deliberately create products that self-destruct after a week instead of a year because “the no-run nylons, which they know how to make, would put a serious crimp in their sales.” Ann concludes that she and her readers are “at the mercy of a conspiracy of self-interest.” One wonders whose self-interest Ann has in mind. Surely it’s not the manufacturers’. If there were a cost-justified way to do it, any self-interested manufacturer would switch from selling one-week nylons at $1 to selling one-year nylons at $52. That pleases the customers (whose pantyhose budget doesn’t change but who make fewer trips to the store), maintains the manufacturer’s revenue, and—because he produces about 98 percent fewer nylons—cuts his costs considerably.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (revised and updated May 2012): Economics & Everyday Life