Thomas J. Sargent Quotes (10 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Thomas J. Sargent: 10 quotes 10 likes

Famous Thomas J. Sargent Quotes

“My recollection is that Bob Lucas and Ed Prescott were initially very enthusiastic about rational expectations econometrics. After all, it simply involved imposing on ourselves the same high standards we had criticized the Keynesians for failing to live up to. But after about five years of doing likelihood ratio tests on rational expectations models, I recall Bob Lucas and Ed Prescott both telling me that those tests were rejecting too many good models.”

Thomas J. Sargent

Thomas J. Sargent interviewed by George W. Evans & Seppo Honkapohja, Macroeconomic Dynamics, 9, 2005, 561–583.

“Cagan’s adaptive mechanism for explaining expectations of inflation has sometimes been criticized as an ad hoc formulation that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that expectations are rational. In this paper, we have showed that conditions exist under which adaptive expectations are fully rational.”

Thomas J. Sargent

"Rational expectations and the dynamics of hyperinflation." 1973

“My published work is just a record of my learning. I'm sharing it with people so they won't make the same mistakes that I did. It's been a painful and slow process. My work is like a journey, a journey of discovery.”

Thomas J. Sargent

Thomas J. Sargent, in Conversations with Economists (1983) by Arjo Klamer

“Q: “Professor Sargent, can you tell me what CD rates will be in two years?””

Thomas J. Sargent

Sargent: “No.”
Thomas J. Sargent in: Ally Bank TV Spot, 'Predictions' Featuring Thomas Sargent http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Lj9/ally-bank-predictions-featuring-thomas-sargent.

“What policymakers (and econometricians) should recognize, then, is that societies face a meaningful set of choices about alternative economic policy regimes.”

Thomas J. Sargent

"Rational expectations and the dynamics of hyperinflation." 1973

“Economics is organized common sense. Here is a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches.”

Thomas J. Sargent

Thomas J. Sargent, University of California at Berkeley graduation speech (2007), quoted in David Glasner, " Memo to Tom Sargent: Economics Is More than Just Common Sense https://uneasymoney.com/2014/04/25/memo-to-tom-sargent-economics-is-more-than-just-common-sense/" (2014)

Thomas J. Sargent Quotes

“For policy, the central fact is that Keynesian policy recommendations have no sounder basis, in a scientific sense, than recommendations of non-Keynesian economists or, for that matter, non-economists.”

Thomas J. Sargent

Robert Lucas, Jr. and Thomas J. Sargent, "After Keynesian macroeconomics", After the Phillips Curve: Persistence of High Inflation and High Unemployment (1978).

Sense

“It is paradoxical that an administration that came to office rejecting the whole apparatus of Keynesian economics finds itself presiding over a stream of what threaten to be permanent deficits.”

Thomas J. Sargent

Thomas J. Sargent "Back to Basics On Budgets", The New York Times (August 10, 1983).