Tjalling Koopmans: Quotes about studying

Tjalling Koopmans was Dutch American economist. Explore interesting quotes on study.
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

“While it was long possible and sometimes tempting for physicists to deny the usefulness of the molecular hypothesis, we economists have the good luck of being some of the ‘molecules’ of economic life ourselves, and of having the possibility through human contacts to study the behavior of other ‘molecules’.”

Tjalling Koopmans

Tjalling Koopmans in: Review of economics and statistics, Vol. 31 -(1949), p. 87

“According to a frequently cited definition, economics is the study of “best use of scarce resources.” The definition is incomplete. “Second best” use of resources, and outright wasteful uses, have equal claim to attention. They are the other side of the coin.”

Tjalling Koopmans

Source: Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, 1975, p. 239: Lead sentence

“It is worth pointing out that in this particular study our authors have abandoned demand and supply functions as a tool for analysis, even as applied to individuals… [The problem] has been reformulated as one of proving that a number of maximizations of individual goals under interdependent restraints can be simultaneously carried out.”

Tjalling Koopmans

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. 60, as cited in: Mitra-Kahn, Benjamin H. "General Equilibrium Theory, its history and its relation (if any) to the Market Economy." (2005).