George Stigler Quotes

George Joseph Stigler was an American economist, the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and a key leader of the Chicago School of Economics. Wikipedia

✵ 17. January 1911 – 1. December 1991

George Stigler: 20 quotes 0 likes

Famous George Stigler Quotes

“Some important aspects of important aspects of economic organization take on a new meaning when they are considered from the viewpoint of the search of information.”

George Stigler

Source: "The economics of information," 1961, p. 213

“In the 1950s, I proposed the survivor method of determining the efficient sizes of enterprises, and worked on delivered price systems, vertical integration, and similar topics.”

George Stigler

"George J. Stigler - Biographical," 1982

“Price dispersion is a manifestation — and, indeed, it is the measure — of ignorance in the market. Dispersion is a biased measure of ignorance because there is never absolute homogeneity in the commodity if we include the terms of sale within the concept of the commodity. Thus, some automobile dealers might perform more service, or carry a larger range of varieties in stock, and a portion of the observed dispersion is presumably attributable to such differences. But it would be metaphysical, and fruitless, to assert that all dispersion is due to heterogeneity.”

George Stigler

Source: "The economics of information," 1961, p. 214

“I do not conceal my lack of admiration for a pain fully long list of redistributive measures undertaken by modern governments. Many serve no ethically accepted purpose such as compassion for the needy; indeed, they serve only as recognition of which groups possess or lack political influence.”

George Stigler

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

“We are entitled to be disappointed, but not to be surprised, by the persistence of governmental intervention in economic life. A school of thought attributes great influence to public opinion in the movements toward or away from laissez-faire. Among the many members of this school one may mention Albert Venn Dicey, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.”

George Stigler

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

“Unlike the members of the physical and biological sciences, the economist is asked to explain his work in a manner that is interesting and convincing to a weary listener. Yet there is no reason to believe that the explanation of our economic and social world is inherently simpler than the explanation of our physical world.”

George Stigler

"George J. Stigler - Banquet Speech," 1982

George Stigler Quotes

“The state --the machinery and power of the state-- is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries.”

George Stigler

Source: "The theory of economic regulation," 1971, p. 3; Lead paragraph
Context: The state --the machinery and power of the state-- is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries. That political juggernaut, the petroleum industry, is an immense consumer of political benefits, and simultaneously the underwriters of marine insurance have their more modest repast. The central tasks of the theory of economic regulation are to explain who will receive the benefits or burdens of regulation, what form regulation will take, and the effects of regulation upon the allocation of resources.

Money , Help , Hurt

“Regulation may be actively sought by an industry, or it may be thrust upon it.”

George Stigler

Source: "The theory of economic regulation," 1971, p. 3
Context: Regulation may be actively sought by an industry, or it may be thrust upon it. A central thesis of this paper is that, as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit. There are regulations whose net effects upon the regulated industry are undeniably onerous; a simple example is the differentially heavy taxation of the industry's product (whiskey, playing cards). These onerous regulations, however, are exceptional and can be explained by the same theory that explains beneficial (we may call it "acquired") regulation.

“In spite of assigning little influence of economists' preachings on actual public policy, I do not believe that economists' influence is negligible. The reconciliation of these views lies in the fact that economists are scientists as well as preachers. Our science seeks to understand how economic institutions and economic systems work, and no informed person can deny that we have made much progress in this work.”

George Stigler

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

Understanding , Science , Personality

“Two main alternative views of the regulation of industry are widely held. The first is that regulation is instituted primarily for the protection and benefit of the public at large or some large subclass of the public. In this view, the regulations which injure the public -as when the oil import quotas increase the cost of petroleum products to America by $5 billion or more a year- are costs of some social goal (here, national defense) or, occasionally, perversions of the regulatory philosophy. the second view is essentially that the political process defies rational explanation: "politics" is an imponderable, a constantly and unpredictably shifting mixture of forces of the most diverse nature, comprehending acts of great moral virtue (the emancipation of slaves) and of the most vulgar venality”

George Stigler

the congressman feathering his own nest
Source: "The theory of economic regulation," 1971, p. 3

Nature

“A rational man must be guided by the incentive system within which he operates. No matter what his own personal desires, he must be discouraged from certain activities if they carry penalties and attracted toward others if they carry large rewards. The carrot and the stick guide scientists and politicians as well as donkeys.”

George Stigler

Stigler (1975, p. 171) as cited in: Owen E.Hughes (2003) Public Management and Administration. p. 11

Penalty , Personality

“The delicate and intricate pattern of competition and cooperation in the economic behavior of the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Stockholm offers a challenge to the economist that is perhaps as complex as the challenges of the physicist and the chemist.”

George Stigler

"George J. Stigler - Banquet Speech," 1982

Behavior

“It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation. My interests were aroused, and my faith in the cliches of the subject destroyed, as so often with other subjects, by the discussions with my friend, Aaron Director. This wonderful man is that rarest of scholars: a clear-headed, imaginative, erudite man who enjoys the task of constructing luminous and original theories but does not even write them down!”

George Stigler

"George J. Stigler - Biographical," 1982

Faith , Imagination , Study

“One should hardly have to tell academicians that information is a valuable resource: knowledge is power. And yet this occupies a slum dwelling in the town of economics. Mostly it is ignored.”

George Stigler

Source: "The economics of information," 1961, p. 213 ; lead paragraph

Knowledge

“Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic phenomena.”

George Stigler

The Economist as Preacher and Other Essays (1982), p.61

“Early in my professional life, I found that many areas of economics attracted me. I started working and publishing in price theory by 1938. In 1946, I published an early work on linear programming (The Cost of Subsistence) which solved the problem only approximately; George Dantzig soon presented the exact solution. In the 1940s, I began empirical work on price theory, starting with a test of the kinked oligopoly demand curve theory of rigid prices.”

George Stigler

"George J. Stigler - Biographical," 1982

Life , Problem

“Dr. Smith and all of his sensible disciples have believed that people would not strive to do anything well unless there were a reasonable measure of agreement between the success of their efforts and the rewards they would receive.”

George Stigler

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

People , Effort , Success

“A useful role exists for the economist is making calculations of the prospective costs and/or benefits of alternative policies. This role is precisely the one Keynes had in mind, I assume, when he expressed the hope that we would become useful after the fashion of dentists.”

George Stigler

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

Hope , Fashion

“Economists are neither distinctively good nor bad, no more or less virtuous or brave or generous or faithful than the sum of mankind, and certainly no more modest.”

George Stigler

Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (1988), Prologue: Are Economists Good People?

Faith

“Lacking education, lacking a tenacity of purpose, lacking a willingness to work hard, he will not be an object of employers' competition. What leader of Negro thought is fostering the ancient virtues of diligence and honesty and loyalty? It is so much easier to seek quotas for Negroes?”

George Stigler

"Inferior Workers" sub-section, p. 12
"The problem of the Negro," 1965

Education , Loyalty

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