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" For decades, my research was driven by outstanding problems in macroeconomics: mainly growth theory and employment theory. "
Edmund Phelps
Research
Problems
Growth
Related Quotes:
" I do think from time to time that conceptual questions arise: What do we mean by equilibrium? What do we mean by this concept and that concept? "
Edmund Phelps
Questions
Time
Think
" In countries operating a largely capitalist system, there does not appear to be a wide understanding among its actors and overseers of either its advantages or its hazards. "
Edmund Phelps
Either
Countries
Understanding
" Well into the 20th century, scholars viewed economic advances as resulting from commercial innovations enabled by the discoveries of scientists - discoveries that come from outside the economy and out of the blue. "
Edmund Phelps
Outside
Blue
Well
" At the simplest level, economics can better show us the consequences of our actions. Less simple are cases in which we don't have the knowledge to predict the full consequences. Global warming and climate change are examples. "
Edmund Phelps
Better
Knowledge
Change
" I didn't do my work for money or prizes - only for the excitement of discovery. "
Edmund Phelps
Discovery
Money
Only
" Liberal redistributionists in favor of heavy taxation place less weight on incentive than do small-government conservatives. "
Edmund Phelps
Liberal
Place
Taxation
" The best part of the high school in Hastings must have been the Music Department. Its orchestra and concert band did well in county competitions, and the dance band formed by its students was the best in the region. I played lead trumpet in all of them. "
Edmund Phelps
Dance
Best
High School
" A nation's economy is more than its markets, tastes, technologies and property rights. "
Edmund Phelps
Rights
Economy
More
" Germany, Italy and France appear to possess less dynamism than do the U.S. and the others. "
Edmund Phelps
France
Germany
Italy
" The level of dynamism is a matter of how fertile the country is in coming up with innovative ideas having prospects of profitability, how adept it is at identifying and nourishing the ideas with the best prospects, and how prepared it is in evaluating and trying out the new products and methods that are launched onto the market. "
Edmund Phelps
Ideas
Country
Best
" Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to 'raise' employment, and we'd all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs. "
Edmund Phelps
See
Better
Inclusion
" It was gradually learned that acceptance of a somewhat higher inflation rate would not really bring somewhat higher employment. "
Edmund Phelps
Bring
Inflation
Higher
" Corporatist attitudes against capitalism came to the fore in the 1920s. Corporatists, with their conservative values, hated the invasion of towns and regions by new businesses, upsetting traditional ways, wealth and status. "
Edmund Phelps
Capitalism
Wealth
Values
" Companies like Google and Facebook may offer jobs allowing or requiring imagination and creativity, but the whole of Silicon Valley accounts for only 3 percent of national income and a smaller percentage of national employment. "
Edmund Phelps
Valley
Imagination
Google
" If you rent, that's it. You don't have to pay any interest to anybody. You don't have to pay any maintenance costs to anybody. You don't have to worry about whether the boiler is going to break down. While if you own your own home, you have a hundred aggravations. "
Edmund Phelps
You
Down
Own
" America's peak years of indigenous innovation ran from the 1820s to the 1960s. There were a few financial panics and two depressions, to be sure. But in this period, a frenzy of creative activity, economic competition and rapid growth in national income provided widening economic inclusion, rising wages for all, and engaging careers for most. "
Edmund Phelps
Growth
Competition
America
" Unemployment rates tend to rise and fall in roughly equal proportion at all rungs of the ladder, and that happened between 1973 and 1985. "
Edmund Phelps
Unemployment
Equal
Ladder
" A modern economy is marked by the feasibility of endogenous change: Modernization brings myriad arrangements from expanded property rights to company law and financial institutions. "
Edmund Phelps
Rights
Financial
Company
" I could try to incorporate or reflect in my models what it is that an employee, manager, or entrepreneur does: to recognize that most are engaged in their work, form expectations and evolve beliefs, solve problems, and have ideas. Trying to put these people into economic models became my project. "
Edmund Phelps
Ideas
Problems
People
" I'm old enough to remember in the 1930s and the 1940s when thrift, frugality, was considered an important virtue. "
Edmund Phelps
Old
Remember
Enough
" An economy open to new concepts and novel ventures is bound to generate unequal gains. "
Edmund Phelps
Bound
Concepts
Economy
" Democrats and Republicans have been very keen to make home ownership almost a national purpose. "
Edmund Phelps
Ownership
Home
Democrats
" The 1920s and 1930s were a period of sensational productivity growth: new products were springing up all over the place, and most of those new products and new methods were developed by people who started their own companies. "
Edmund Phelps
Own
Place
People
" A system where self-employment and self-finance was typical gave way to a system of companies having various business freedoms and enabling institutions. This was the 'great transformation' on which historians and sociologists as well as business commentators were to write volumes. "
Edmund Phelps
Business
Transformation
Way
" My God, I don't know anyone who likes to accumulate their wealth more than the Europeans. "
Edmund Phelps
God
Who
Likes
" An indictment of entitlements has to focus on the huge 'social wealth' that the welfare state creates at the stroke of the pen. Yet statistical tests of the effects of welfare spending on employment yield erratic results. "
Edmund Phelps
Focus
Tests
Pen
" I don't think the economy telegraphs very clearly where it's going. "
Edmund Phelps
Where
Clearly
Economy
" Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations. "
Edmund Phelps
America
Copy
Growth
" Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity: they don't know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be - there is the law of unanticipated consequences. "
Edmund Phelps
Push
Think
Picture
" One reason why upturns follow downturns is that downturns tend to overshoot. People get panicky, they're afraid to stay the course, so they start selling. The other thing is that I think, as entrepreneurs keep on waiting to produce new things, that there's an accumulation of as-yet-unexploited new ideas that keeps mounting up. "
Edmund Phelps
Think
People
New Things