people-from-oslo

"By using 'man, mankind, men, he, and his' all through, you unconsciously convey the old image of the noble masterful male once more out to rescue the human race....Here is the vocabulary you must use if the new image of man is not to be sexist as the old: 'humankind, humanity, human being, humans, persons, individuals', etc. For this century, at least, until our thought habits have been reformed, the use of 'man' as an inclusive term is out....You can't stick in a sentence on women's lib and adequately transform the concept 'human' thereby."

"We have been for so long, a uniform Protestant country, but Norway has also been changing, become what I would call a more pluricultural society, many people have come to Norway, many of them are also Catholics, so that the Catholic contingent in Norway has grown, and they bring many new thoughts, interesting thinking, and it leads to, let us say, informed debate in the country, which is good for all of us."

"It’s really thrilling to teach somebody all the different things I’ve learned in the past and that I can cull from my own experiences. I’m fortunate to be able to do what I wanted to do most of my life."

"I had a good experience overall. There were a couple of famous Hollywood people who tried to take advantage of me – I’m not mentioning any names! I was around 16 and I knew it was wrong, so I stood up for myself."

"Change is possible, and I know, hope is very difficult to hold on to. But hope in this time, is actually, an act of defiance, it's an act of resistance. I refuse to dehumnaize those people who dehumanize me. Because, otherwise there is really no difference between us and people like them."

"Some anti-fascist protesters, the so-called "Antifa," use pepper spray against the marchers, including me."

"If their own blood relatives discarded, betrayed, forgot and harmed them, then they are our children, our sisters our mothers that we will mourn, we will remember, we will honour their memory and we will not forget!""

"For example, how great the difference was between our days. While my days were jam-packed with meaning, when each step opened a new opportunity, and when every opportunity filled me to the brim, in a way which now is actually incomprehensible, the meaning of his days was not concentrated in individual events but spread over such large areas that it was not possible to comprehend them in anything other than abstract terms."

"For action to be rational, the beliefs on which it is based must themselves be well founded. In turn, this requirement is divided into two parts. On the one hand, the beliefs must be unbiased with respect to the information the agent possesses; on the other hand, he must gather an optimal amount of information."

"Let us take first an absurd example: always preferring goods that come on Thursdays to those that come on Wednesdays, solely because of a preference for that particular day of the week. As we shall see, this is not contrary to the principles of rational choice, but it is certainly contrary to reason. The simple preference for Thursdays is a reason, but reason also demands the reason for that reason. And obviously there is none."

"In a general way, we can represent the present value of a future good as a function of the time separating the present from this future. In the classical conception, an exponential future discount is stipulated, which implies that the curves corresponding to two distinct future goods, one small and immediate, the other large and more remote, never intersect. According to more recent research, however, it seems that this discount typically takes a hyperbolic form."

"In this reconstruction, the idea of reason comprises three elements: impartiality with regard to persons, temporal impartiality, and rational or well-founded beliefs. No doubt we should add goodwill, in order to exclude impartial malice."

"What, finally, are the functions of reason and rationality in human behaviors? They are the functions, respectively, of the prince’s tutor and his councilor. The tutor teaches the prince to promote the public good in the long term. The councilor tells him how to act in order to achieve his goals, whatever they might be, in the most efficient way. It is not incumbent upon the councilor to impose the demands of reason; but if the tutor has done his job well, the prince will make them his own."

"The premise of this statement is what one might call the principle of non-indirection. I call “indirection” an indirect operation that makes it possible to arrive at a certain result through two successive actions, the first of which serves only to make the second possible. ... This principle is not limited to rational actions. ... The principle of non-indirection thus expresses a broader idea of coherence that includes the emotional as well as the rational."

"For a rational actor, the information he uses to shape his beliefs is a variable rather than a given. Before deciding how to act, he has to make a preliminary decision concerning the quantity of resources he is prepared to invest in looking for the relevant facts. A general must not attack before he has surveyed the terrain, or a surgeon operate before he has examined the patient. However, they must not delay too long, for then they may be surprised by the enemy’s attack or flight, or by the patient’s death."

"Acting in conformity with reason, in the singular, and acting for good reasons, in the plural, are two different things insofar as reason is objective, whereas reasons are subjective. From an external point of view, we can evaluate a policy as being in conformity with reason or not. From an internal point of view, one can evaluate an action as being rational or not. From this difference it follows that only rationality can be used for explanatory ends. It is only insofar as the agent has made the demands of reason his own that the latter may give rise to, and possibly explain, specific behaviors. The assessment of the actor and that of the observer need not coincide."

"The idea that reason requires an impartial treatment of individuals corresponds to well-known principles. To resolve the questions of distributive justice, Leibniz proposes the following maxim: “Put your self in the place of everyone.” In recent theories, this amounts to saying that the choice of a just organization of society must take place behind a “veil of ignorance,” an idea that can be interpreted in several ways. For utilitarianism, each individual must count as one, and none as more than one. For John Rawls, we have to choose the form of society that favors the least advantaged, whoever they might be. Another impartial idea is that of universal rights, embodied in the two declarations of 1776 and 1789."

"The theory of rational action may therefore fail, because it is unable to produce unique prescriptions and predictions. It may also fail if the agents’ behavior does not conform to predictions, whether these are unique or not; that is, if the agents are irrational. There are multiple sources of irrationality, hot or cold."

"Biases are either “hot” (that is, produced by the agent’s motivational system) or “cold” (more similar to optical illusions)."

"Characterized in this way, interest properly understood is an amalgam of objective and subjective elements. An entirely objective conception would substitute true beliefs for well-founded beliefs. But it is impossible to make political decisions dependent on the possession of truth."

"We may predict that the science of which we try to be the humble and devoted servants will in the future life of the nations be an important factor in eliminating maladjustments between fundamental economic sectors and assure a smooth and progressive utilization of resources... One wants men with a knowledge of the characteristic features of the economic and social structure of their country and with a fundamental theoretical knowledge along modern lines."

"Certain exterior impulses hit the economic mechanism and thereby initiate more or less regular oscillations."

"At present the national budget plays a very large role in the whole financial policy of our country."

"The majority of the economic oscillations which we encounter seem to be explained most plausibly as free oscillations."

"Econometrics is by no means the same as economic statistics. Nor is it identical with what we call general economic theory, although a considerable portion of this theory has a definitely quantitative character. Nor should econometrics be taken as synonymous with the application of mathematics to economics. Experience has shown that each of these three view-points, that of statistics, economic theory, and mathematics, is a necessary, but not by itself a sufficient, condition for a real understanding of the quantitative relations in modern economic life. It is the unification of all three that is powerful. And it is this unification that constitutes econometrics."

"[The] length of the cycles and the tendency towards dampening are determined by the intrinsic structure of the swinging system, while the intensity (the amplitude) of the fluctuations is determined primarily by the exterior impulse. An important consequence of this is that a more or less regular fluctuation may be be produced by a cause which operates irregularly."

"When we approach the study of business cycle with the intention of carrying through an analysis that is truly dynamic and determinate in the above sense, we are naturally led to distinguish between two types of analyses: the micro-dynamic and the macro-dynamic types. The micro-dynamic analysis is an analysis by which we try to explain in some detail the behaviour of a certain section of the huge economic mechanism, taking for granted that certain general parameters are given. Obviously it may well be that we obtain more or less cyclical fluctuations in such sub-systems, even though the general parameters are given. The essence of this type of analysis is to show the details of the evolution of a given specific market, the behaviour of a given type of consumers, and so on."

"There is also present another source of energy operating in a more continuous fashion and being more intimately connected with the permanent evolution in human societies."

"We may perhaps start by throwing all kinds of production into one variable, all consumption into another, and so on, imagining that the notions 'production', 'consumption', and so on, can be measured by some sort of total indices. At present certain examples of micro-dynamic analyses have been worked out, but as far as I know no determinate macro-dynamic analysis is yet to be found in the literature."

"In reality the cycles we have the occasion to observe are generally not damped. How can the maintenance of the swings be explained? Have theses dynamic laws deduced from theory and showing damped oscillations no value in explaining the real phenomena, or in what respect do the dynamic laws need to be completed in order to explain the real happenings? They (dynamic laws) only form one element of the explanation: they solve the propagation problem. But the impulse problem remains."

"The propagation problem is the problem of explaining by the structural properties of the swinging system what the character of the swings would be in case the system was started in some initial situation"

"I approached the problem of utility measurement in 1923 during a stay in Paris. There were three objects I had in view :"

"I believe that economic theory has arrived at a point in its development where the appeal to quantitative empirical data has become more necessary than ever. At the same time its analyses have reached a degree of complexity that require the application of a more refined scientific method than that employed by the classical economists."

"Intermediate between mathematics, statistics, and economics, we find a new discipline which, for lack of a better name, may be called econometrics. Econometrics has as its aim to subject abstract laws of theoretical political economy or "pure" economics to experimental and numerical verification, and thus to turn pure economics, as far as possible, into a science in the strict sense of the word."

"Ragnar Frisch was an ardent protagonist for more scientific economics in the interwar period and played an active role internationally through his scholarly contributions but also through his efforts for the and its journal , which may be regarded as landmarks both for the scientification and the internationalization of economics. For many years Frisch was the only Norwegian economist of international renown and became a father figure for Norwegian economics."

"Deep in the human nature there is an almost irresistible tendency to concentrate physical and mental energy on attempts at solving problems that seem to be unsolvable."

"… in economic political discussions there is a nearly infinite number of specific questions that may be asked. Besides the ones mentioned in section 3 consider for instance these: "Should we build a road between points A and B in the country?", "Should we promote investments that will give employment to many people, or should we on the contrary promote such investment which will save labour?"… "Should we put more emphasis on things that have up to now not been included in the statistical concept of the gross national product? For instance, should we try to avoid air-pollution and all the kinds of intoxications that may be caused by refuse and waste (a problem that must be studied in its totality as a problem of circulation of matter in society, much in the same way as we study interindustry relations in an input-output table)?“, “Should we assess economic value to an undisturbed nature?” etc."

"An important object of the Journal should be the publication of papers dealing with attempts at statistical verification of the laws of economic theory, and further the publication of papers dealing with the purely abstract problems of quantitative economics, such as problems in the quantitative definition of the fundamental concepts of economics and problems in the theory of economic equilibrium. The term equilibrium theory is here interpreted as including both the classical equilibrium theory proceeding on the lines of Walras, Pareto, and Marshall, and the more general equilibrium theory which is now beginning to grow out of the classical equilibrium theory, partly through the influence of the modern study of economic statistics. Taken in this broad sense the equilibrium problems include virtually all those fundamental problems of production, circulation, distribution and consumption, which can be made the object of a quantitative study. More precisely: The equilibrium theory in the sense here used is a body of doctrines that treats all these problems from a certain point of view, which is contrasted on one side with the verbal treatment of economic problems and on the other side with the purely empirical-statistical approach to economic problems"

"In this feverish world of ours, where one wants the economic analyses to produce easily understandable results quickly and at the least possible cost, some of us have fallen into the habit of assuming for simplicity that the hundreds sometimes thousands of variables that enter into the analyses are linked together by very simple relationships. Frequently we even go so far as to assume linear relationships. Only in this way have we been able to feed our problems into the electronic computers and get mechanical answers quickly and at low cost."

"Questions of convergence under an infinite time horizon will depend so much on epsilontic refinements in the system of assumptions — and on the infinite constancy of these refinements — that we are humanly speaking absolutely certain of getting infinite time horizon results which have no relevance to concrete reality. And in particular we are absolutely certain of getting irrelevant results if such epsilontic exercises are made under the assumption of a constant technology. 'In the long run we are all dead.' These words by Keynes ought to be engraved in marble and put on the desk of all epsilontologists, in growth theory under an infinite horizon."

"I have insisted that econometrics must have relevance to concrete realities, otherwise it degenerates into something which is not worthy of the name econometrics, but ought rather to be called playometrics."

"In this essay on econometrics in its conception and its use in economic planning for the betterment of man’s fate, I will try to cover a very broad field. When talking about the methodology in the particular fields mentioned - about which I am supposed to have a little more than second hand knowledge - I have always found it utterly inadequate to focus attention only on these special fields without seeing them in a much broader perspective. Therefore it was inevitable that I should have to include in the field of vision of this paper also some branches of science where I can only speak as a layman, hopefully as a somewhat informed layman. For whatever blunders I may have made in these fields I must ask for the reader’s forgiveness"

"To proceed from assumptions about an abstract theoretical set-up and from them to draw conclusions about the observable world and to test - by rough or more refined means - whether the conformity with observations is "good" enough, is indeed the time honoured procedure that all empirical sciences, including the natural sciences, have used. I shall therefore not plead guilty of heresy even if I do work with choice-theory concepts that are not invariant under a general monotonic transformation of the utility indicator."

"Two important features in the modern development of economics are the application of mathematics to abstract economic reasoning... and the attempt at placing economics on a numerical and experimental basis by an intensive study of economic statistics."

"In the last decade's intensive study of all sorts of social and economic time series, it has become clear, it seems to me, that the usual time series technique is not quite adequate for the purpose which the social investigator is pursuing... We want to find out on more or less empirical grounds what is actually present in the series at hand, that is to say, what sort of components the series contains."

"Personally, I never met . I saw him once when he delivered a lecture in Oslo, but being an unassuming student at the time, I did not have the courage to talk to him. So my knowledge of his theory came only through his writings. That, however, was a very intense and absorbing form of making his acquaintance. Already from my early student days, I read his writings (in German and Swedish) avidly. And I continued to do so later. When I started my study on Wicksell, I found that his works were not easy reading. Often it was only at the third or fourth reading that I grasped his ideas. Invariably, each new reading made me more and more enthusiastic. Sometimes it happened that I thought I had finally caught him in an inconsistency or in unclear thinking. Every time this happened, it turned out, however, that the error was mine."

"Usually it is easier to obtain estimates for budget proportions and Engel elasticities than for elasticities with respect to price. By making certain want independence assumptions, the elasticities with respect to price can be deduced from the knowledge of budget proportions and Engel elasticities. In this connection the concept of the flexibility of the marginal utility of money is essential. A system of formulae decribing these relations is given."

"(Econometrics is) the unification of economic theory, statistics and mathematics."

"Hvis folk spytter meg i trynet, svarer jeg med et spark i balla. Det anbefaler jeg ikke til andre."

"The Soviet leaders have always disliked and feared the North Atlantic Alliance, and all that it stands for. They did their utmost to prevent it being born. You will remember that just as your distinguished Foreign Minister Mr. Lange was about to leave Oslo for Washington to enquire about the North Atlantic Treaty, a Note was received from the Soviet Government inviting Norway to conclude a non-aggression pact with them. Norway made her choice. She declined the Russian offer; and on the 3rd March, 1949 decided to join the Atlantic Alliance, while making it clear that she would not allow armed forces of foreign powers to be stationed in Norway so long as the country had not been attacked or threatened with attack. Thus the Soviet failed to prevent the Treaty being signed, but this did not deter them from trying to prevent the Alliance being extended or strengthened. When there was a question of Greece and Turkey joining the Alliance, the Soviet did their utmost by a mixture of blandishment and threats to prevent their doing so. Two years ago they took exactly the same line when the question of the accession of the Federal Republic of Germany was under consideration."