"Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world. It is compelled to be this, because, unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time. The object of a model is to segregate the semi-permanent or relatively constant factors from those which are transitory or fluctuating so as to develop a logical way of thinking about the latter, and of understanding the time sequences to which they give rise in particular cases. Good economists are scarce because the gift for using "vigilant observation" to choose good models, although it does not require a highly specialised intellectual technique, appears to be a very rare one."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge facultyEconomists from EnglandSociologists from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Letter to Roy Harrod (4 July 1938), in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol. XIV (1971), p. 297
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Maynard Keynes
1883 – 1946
Britischer Nationalökonom
272 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Maynard Keynes →
Related Quotes
"Poland is an economic impossibility with no industry but Jew-baiting."
"The belief that monetary instability--inflation and deflation--is the principal, or at least a principal, cause of ot…"
"The great service of Keynes to recent history is that we now know, in the way that governments did not know in the 19…"
"No one embodied the Cambridge spirit of culture, fun, and public duty so much as Maynard Keynes. No one was more bril…"
"In a book which gained a vast publicity, particularly in the United States, he exposed and denounced "a Carthaginian …"
"I can tell you — I was helping when Britain was trying to get a loan from the United States immediately after the war…"
"Why does Camelot lie in ruins? Intellectual error of monumental proportion has been made, and not exclusively by the …"
"There was nothing in these views to repel a student; or to make Keynes attractive. Keynes had nothing to offer those …"
"Keynes is largely responsible for elevating employment (and/or output) to a position as an explicit objective for pol…"
"What do you think of J. M. Keynes's book? ... The condemnation of the work of the Conference as a whole is none too s…"