Tjalling Koopmans: Quotes about optimism

Tjalling Koopmans was Dutch American economist. Explore interesting quotes on optimism.
Tjalling Koopmans: 32 quotes0 likes

“… a rather different class of applications of the idea of best allocation of scarce resources… usually referred to as the theory of optimal economic growth. In most studies of this kind made in the countries with market economies there is not an identifiable client to whom the findings are submitted as policy recommendations. Nor is there an obvious choice of objective function, such as cost minimization or profit maximization in the studies addressed to individual enterprises. The field has more of a speculative character. The models studied usually contain only a few highly aggregated variables. One considers alternative objective functions that incorporate or emphasize various strands of ethical, political, or social thought. These objectives are then tried out to see what future paths of the economy they imply under equally simplified assumptions of technology or resource availability.”

Tjalling Koopmans

Source: Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, 1975, p. 244

“One can in particular interpret the proposition as a statement conditions under which the simplicity of incentive structure and the economies of information handling characteristic of a competitive market organization can be secured without loss of efficiency of allocation… The price system carries to each producer, resource holder, or consumer a summary of information about the production possibilities, resource availabilities and preferences of all other decision makers. Under the conditions postulated, this summary is all that is needed to keep all decision makers reconciled with a Pareto optimal state once it has been established.”

Tjalling Koopmans

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. 53, as cited in: Harold Kincaid, ‎Don Ross (2009) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics. p. 128

“Optimizing responses of economic agents are simultaneously feasible only if the proper prices are already known to them. But these prices must somehow themselves be the result of the same responses.”

Tjalling Koopmans

Tjalling C. Koopmans, "Is the Theory of Competitive Equilibrium With It?," The American Economic Review, Vol. 64, No. 2, May 1974; p. 327