Kenneth Arrow famous quotes

Knowledge is a free good. The biggest cost in its transmission is not in the production or distribution of knowledge, but in its assimilation. This is something that all teachers know.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Teacher #Cost #Assimilation

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Belief #Certainty

The MD is well aware that the forecasts are no good but he needs them for planning purposes ...
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Needs #Purpose #Planning

Now virtue may not always be its own reward, but in any case it is not usually bought and paid for at market rates.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#May #Rewards #Virtue

The general uncertainty about the prospects of medical treatment is socially handled by rigid entry requirements. These are designed to reduce the uncertainty in the mind of the consumer as to the quality insofar as this is possible. I think this explanation, which is perhaps the naive one, is much more tenable than any idea of a monopoly seeking to increase incomes.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Ideas #Mind

My research, even before 1972, moved in directions beyond those cited for the Nobel Memorial Prize. Most of it, in one way or another, deals with information as an economic variable, both as to its production and as to its use.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Memorial #Use #Research

My graduate study was interrupted, like that of many others, by World War II.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#War #World #Study

My undergraduate education, at the City College in New York, was made possible only by the existence of that excellent free institution and the financial sacrifices of my parents.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#New York #Sacrifice #College

Unsolved problems, that's one of the great signs of progress in my opinion.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Progress #Opinion #Problem

Usefulness depends on tractability.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Depends #Usefulness

One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Meteorology #Guarantees #Exactness

Markets are not, in my opinion, a full solution to any problem. The obvious problem they don't meet is the concerns of the welfare of individuals who may get lost in the operation of the system - the distributional question. We've seen this growing as we go further and further toward a market ideology in the United States and the United Kingdom. We've seen a decline in the welfare of the working poor, leaving aside any other pathologies, just the working poor, a very distinct increase at the very top levels.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Leaving #Growing #Levels

One way of looking at Impossibility Theorem is that we proposed some criteria for what a good system should be: what is it you want from a voting system, and impose some conditions. And then ask: can you have a voting system that guarantees that?
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Guarantees That #Voting #Want

The world is changing. We're not really proceeding on a stationary basis.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#World #Bases #Stationary

I think the idea that a society has to be responsible for all of its citizens, those who do well and those who do not, is really a precondition of a good society.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Ideas #Citizens

We have to be more modest in what we claim.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Claims #Modest

Education is still, in spite of private education, a state matter.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Matter #States #Spite

It seems to me that at least as far as the financial markets are concerned, there is increasing evidence against rational expectations, even at the macro level.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Expectations #Levels #Financial

I think on the efficiency level, not only the distribution level, capitalism is a flawed system. It probably has the same virtues as Churchill attributed to democracy: It's the worst system except for any other. And I think that's right, but it cannot be thought that some unmitigated belief in free markets is a cure even from the efficiency point of view.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Views #Democracy

I'm struck by the fact that by and large equity capital doesn't play a big role in new financing; it's either bonds or internal financing but not really equity. And therefore, it's not clear that anything which improves the equity markets has really much to do with the productivity of the economy as a whole.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Play #Facts #Roles

The rate of growth of the relevant population is much greater than the rate of growth in funds, though funds have gone up very nicely. But we have been producing students at a rapid rate; they're competing for funds and therefore they're more frustrated. I think there's a certain sense of weariness in the intellectual realm, it's not in any way peculiar to economics, it's a general proposition.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Growth #Frustrated

One doesn't like instabilities in markets; they may be damaging, but probably not fatal, as the October '87 crash showed. It turned out to be essentially inconsequential. So if that's true, I'm not very worried about the welfare of those who are investing any more than I am about the welfare of those who go into casinos.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#October #Investing #May

I think that systems that are based on employment are illogical and attempts to meet them create all sorts of unnecessary complexities.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Employment #Unnecessary

I think one of the things we learned from the physicists and also the theoretical biologists is the idea that when you're dealing with very complex systems you're going to get a large variety of behavior which can be interpreted as hill climbing, but hill climbing with a lot of modifications, hill climbing with big jumps occasionally.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Ideas #Climbing

Venture capital has done much more, I think, to improve efficiency than anything.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Thinking #Done #Venture

From the time I first understood economic principles, I was always concerned also that any system be operated on an efficient basis, which meant decentralization because knowledge is not concentrated anywhere. It's based on motivation, and so these are the advantages of, say, the cautious case for capitalism, that the market system is efficient.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Motivation #Firsts #Principles

There are all sorts of institutions in the economic world which depart from the simple price/market model which I worked on in an earlier incarnation and which has been sort of the mainstream of economic theories since Adam Smith and David Ricardo. There are all sorts of contractual relations between firms and individuals which do not conform to the simple price theory - profit-sharing schemes and so forth - and the explanation for these suddenly became clear. We now understand why these emerged and that they are based on differences in information in the economy.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Simple #Differences #World

Some people say Russia is running at 50 percent of its gross domestic product under that during the Communist period. In fact, none of the countries seems to have recovered the level that they had under communism, although the other countries in Eastern Europe are doing better than Russia and particularly the Czech Republic seems to be doing modestly well. East Germany I can't count because they have a rich uncle. You have economic benefits which have nothing to do with the workings of the system.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Country #Running #Uncles

Family is a difficult matter. I must admit I do not know that the state can intervene successfully in a family. It's a fact that everything is connected with the individualist temperament, the kind of economic environment which stresses the individual, but this is not directly the result of a state policy, nor do I see any good way by which the state could intervene except in some marginal ways.
-- Kenneth Arrow

#Stress #Way #Facts