"Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the Battle of Austerlitz. If I do that, I'm getting tacitly drawn into the game that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. Now, Bob Lucas and Tom Sargent like nothing better than to get drawn into technical discussions, because then you have tacitly gone along with their fundamental assumptions; your attention is attracted away from the basic weakness of the whole story. Since I find that fundamental framework ludicrous, I respond by treating it as ludicrous – that is, by laughing at it – so as not to fall into the trap of taking it seriously and passing on to matters of technique."
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Jews from the United StatesPeople from New York CityNobel laureates from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesNobel laureates in Economics
Original Language: English
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Quoted in Conversations with Economists (1983) by Arjo Klamer, p. 146
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Solow
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Robert Solow
Robert Merton Solow (August 23, 1924 – December 21, 2023) was an American economist particularly known for his work on the theory of economic growth that culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal (in 1961) and the 1987 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
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