Quotes by Tim Harford - Page 1

Economics spreads happiness.
Tim Harford / Economist
Economics
Spread
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Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying.
Tim Harford / Economist
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I am aiming my books at anybody with no economics background.
Tim Harford / Economist
Backgrounds
Book
Economics
Aiming
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Love may be boundless and abundant, but time isn't. Time is finite.
Tim Harford / Economist
Boundless
Finite
May
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Failure is inevitable; it happens all the time in a complex economy.
Tim Harford / Economist
Complexes
Economy
Inevitable
Complex
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People today dont become economists to make the world a better place.
Tim Harford / Economist
People
Today
World
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People today don't become economists to make the world a better place.
Tim Harford / Economist
Better Place
Today World Better
Economists
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British politicians used to be good at misleading people without actually lying.
Tim Harford / Economist
Lying
People
Politician
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We should not try to design a better world. We should make better feedback loops.
Tim Harford / Economist
Design
Trying
World
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There's lots and lots of guys out there. The question is trying to find the right one.
Tim Harford / Economist
Guy
Trying
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There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.
Tim Harford / Economist
Accounts
Economist
More To Life
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Success Comes Through Rapidly Fixing our Mistakes Rather than Getting Things Right the First Time.
Tim Harford / Economist
Firsts
Fixing
Mistake
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You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.
Tim Harford / Economist
Errors
Successful
Trial And Error
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A lot of international companies invest in the U.K. as a base for doing business with the rest of the European Union.
Tim Harford / Economist
Company
European Union
Unions
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Trying to be able to have, let's say, more than three partners was absolutely impossible, at least for my own relationships.
Tim Harford / Economist
Able
Three
Trying
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Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can.
Tim Harford / Economist
Economist
Serious
Allowed
Economists
Forecast
Walk
Thinks
Trap
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The more grotesque your boss's pay and the less he has do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work with the aim of being promoted to what he has.
Tim Harford / Economist
Boss
Motivation
Pay
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Our society is intertwined with the economy that we've built, which is a fantastically complex system. I hope that my writing about it might do some good, but that's not why I do it.
Tim Harford / Economist
Intertwined
Complex
Complex System
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In certain businesses, I would say 10 failures to one success is a perfectly acceptable ratio. Because the failures die pretty quickly, they're not that expensive, and the successes can be really huge.
Tim Harford / Economist
Acceptable
Expensive
Businesses
Perfectly
Ratio
Success Is
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I never understand why 'economist makes forecast' is ever a headline. Whether the economist in question is from the International Monetary Fund, a City forecasting group or the Treasury - a forecast is still not news.
Tim Harford / Economist
Economist
Fund
Monetary
Treasury
Forecast
Headline
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Norway has a relationship with the EU which is very close. It has to accept most EU rules. It has to pay EU membership fees. It has free movement of people just like other EU countries, but it's not actually in the EU.
Tim Harford / Economist
Country
Movement
People
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Pluralism matters because life is not worth living without new experiences - new people, new places, new challenges. But discipline matters too; we cannot simply treat life as a psychedelic trip through a series of novel sensations.
Tim Harford / Economist
Discipline
New Experiences
People
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How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us - computers and cell phones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.
Tim Harford / Economist
Computers
Amazing Things
Bunch
Cells
Ideas
Phones
Produce
Cell
Cell Phones
Good Ones
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If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that's not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it... that's a real problem.
Tim Harford / Economist
Emotional
Mean
Real
Reaction
Real Problem
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Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.
Tim Harford / Economist
Errors
Mean
Struggle
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I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank's name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate.
Tim Harford / Economist
Association
Economist
Forecasting
Investment
Unfortunate
Bank
Chief
Great Way
Hire
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Funnily enough, the Federal Reserve produced comics about monetary policy, and there is a good comic book guide to microeconomics and macroeconomics out there. But it is not really appropriate for younger readers; it is really aimed at economics students.
Tim Harford / Economist
Appropriate
Comic
Comic Book
Federal Reserve
Monetary
Monetary Policy
Guide
Produced
Readers
Reserve
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Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.
Tim Harford / Economist
Advice
Economist
Giving
Good Advice
Teeth
Thinking
Economists
Forecast
Thinks
Trap
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Each additional child that you have is going to divide your time and your attention. You're going to have to cram them into a smaller house. They're going to have to share rooms, or you might have to move into the suburbs, somewhere cheaper, further away from where the job is.
Tim Harford / Economist
Jobs
Children
Moving
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It's difficult because we tend to overrate the pain of failure. We fear it too much. That's research that emerges from psychology. We think it's going to be worse than it really is. And, I think, as we get a bit older, really after we leave school or college, we quickly stop experimenting.
Tim Harford / Economist
Psychology
Emerges
Experimenting
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I see the God complex around me all the time in my fellow economists. I see it in our business leaders. I see it in the politicians we vote for - people who, in the face of an incredibly complicated world, are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they understand the way that the world works.
Tim Harford / Economist
Complicated World
Inspiration
Motivation
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There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).
Tim Harford / Economist
Enemy
Firsts
Thinking
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I don't think Brian Cox does 'The Wonders of the Solar System' because he believes the world would be a better place if people understood about the rings of Saturn; I just think he finds physics extremely interesting. It brings him joy, and he wants to spread the love. I feel the same about economics.
Tim Harford / Economist
Better Place
Brian
Joy
Physics
Rings
Saturn
Solar System
Spread
Understood
Love World Better
Believes
Love World Joy
Brings
Love Better World
Cox
Extremely
Finds
Wonders
Solar
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Cory Doctorow should be too busy for lunch. He's co-editor of, and a prolific contributor to, one of the most influential blogs in the world, Boing Boing. Over the past decade the Canadian-born writer has published 16 books, mostly science fiction novels. He campaigns vigorously on the politics of the digital age.
Tim Harford / Economist
Blogs
Busy
Campaigns
Digital
Digital Age
Influential
Lunch
Science Fiction
Contributor
Decade
Prolific
Past Decade
Published
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Ten percent of American businesses disappear every year. ... It's far higher than the failure rate of, say, Americans. Ten percent of Americans don't disappear every year. Which leads us to conclude American businesses fail faster than Americans, and therefore American businesses are evolving faster than Americans.
Tim Harford / Economist
Inspiration
Motivation
Years
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Bill Phillips was this nervous, chain-smoking student. He had signed up to be an engineer, he had gone away to fight in the Second World War, he had come back. He had switched to sociology because he wanted to understand how people could do these terrible things to each other. And he did a little bit of economics on the side.
Tim Harford / Economist
Little Bit
Nervous
Second World War
Sociology
Terrible
Bill
War Fight World
Student
Signed
Switched
World War
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The supermarket chain Whole Foods has quite a radical employee empowerment program, where employees get to decide whether another employee can work in their team or not. If they think this person's a slacker, doesn't have good ideas, they can vote and say, no, we don't want this person to be working with us on the vegetable aisle.
Tim Harford / Economist
Aisle
Employee
Good Ideas
Program
Whole Foods
Work Good Person
Chain
Foods
Supermarket
Vegetable
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We now have political chaos. We've got parties in Ireland saying they want to merge with Northern Ireland. You've got parties in Scotland saying you want to leave the U.K. You've got the Spanish government saying it would like to take ownership of Gibraltar, which is a British overseas territory... So just the politics of this is a mess.
Tim Harford / Economist
Government
Party
Scotland
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Failure's inevitable. It happens all the time in a complex economy. And how did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us, computers and cell phones and so on? Well, the process was trial and error. There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered, and the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.
Tim Harford / Economist
Computers
Failure
Amazing Things
Bunch
Inevitable
Phones
Produce
Trial And Error
Bad Ones
Cell
Cell Phones
Complex
Error
Good Ones
Trial
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Loss aversion is a really disproportionate anxiety about stuff that doesn't matter very much. So for instance, if you lose $5, you feel really bad about the $5 you've lost. You're cursing yourself. You're going through it again and again. If, on the other hand, you find $5, you go - hey, great, five bucks. And you've forgotten about it really quickly.
Tim Harford / Economist
Anxiety
Hands
Loss
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In many ways, love seems to be totally divorced from economics. But then you realize - well, the stakes are high. This is something that matters to us. We're dealing with scarcity. I mean, if you're dating one person, at the very least, you don't have as much time to date another person. And you may well find that you can only date one person at a time.
Tim Harford / Economist
Dating
Mean
Scarcity
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Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.
Tim Harford / Economist
Book
Player
Real
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