Richard Stone: Quotes about nature

Richard Stone was British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner. Explore interesting quotes on nature.
Richard Stone: 22 quotes0 likes

“We usually find a considerable degree of correlation between indicators and also between different sets of weights that we should ever think of using. Consequently we are likely to find that alternative index numbers using different weights show similar and often approximately proportionate movements. That this is so in most economic applications is due to the nature of the actual world and not simply to the formal characteristics of index number techniques.”

Richard Stone

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 7; As cited in: Chao, Hsiang-Ke. Representation and structure: The methodology of econometric models of consumption. 2002.

“I have tried to make clear in this brief sketch of the nature of deductively formulated theories, at least as they occur in economics, that, although their origin lies in common observation and introspection, nevertheless they are capable of a purely mathematical development through the exact statement of a of a set of postulates which, however, since they must inevitably contain assumptions about human behaviour, require to be tested by reference to actual events.”

Richard Stone

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 14-15

“In 1945, the war ended and I was chosen to be the first director of the newly-established Department of Applied Economics in Cambridge. Between leaving the government service and taking up my new post, I had a break of about three months which I spent at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. I intended to use my time there writing up my ideas on a social accounting system for the measurement of economic flows, a thing I had wanted to do for years but had not had time for during the war. What happened was that, in Princeton, I met Alexander Loveday, the Director of Intelligence at the League of Nations, who wanted a paper on the problems of defining and measuring the national income and related totals for consideration by the League's Committee of Statistical Experts. He asked me if I would undertake the work and naturally I accepted. I soon had a memorandum ready and it was discussed in Princeton while I was still there by a subcommittee convened by Loveday. Their report was eventually published by the United Nations in Geneva in 1947 under the title, Measurement of National Income and the Construction of Social Accounts, with my memorandum as an appendix.”

Richard Stone

"Richard Stone - Biographical," 1984