Michael Spence Quotes

#1. The combination of a workable basic formula and the capacity to improve over time is what one hopes for in any aspect of society: business, government, the non-profit sector. - Author: Michael Spence

#2. Although everyone does benefit from lower-priced goods and services, people also care greatly about the chance to be productively employed and the quality of their work. Declining employment opportunities feel real and immediate; the rise in real incomes brought by lower prices does not. - Author: Michael Spence

#3. invest simultaneously in the agricultural sector, in education, in productivity-enhancing technology and its dissemination, and in infrastructure that enables connectivity to the rest of the economy. - Author: Michael Spence

#4. It is a wonderful and unexpected honor to receive the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Receiving this prize with Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, whose work I have learned from and admired, makes it even more gratifying. - Author: Michael Spence

#5. Globalization has redefined the competition for employment and incomes in the United States. Tradeoffs will have to be made between the two. - Author: Michael Spence

#6. Digitally enabled supply chains initially increased efficiency and dramatically shortened lead times. Capital was mobile; labor, less so. Economic activity (production, research, design, etc.) moved to any accessible country or region that had relatively inexpensive labor and human capital. - Author: Michael Spence

#7. I was not thinking about infinite multipliers when I was 10. But I did have a father who was a Ph.D. in commerce and finance and an intellectual man. And so I had a feeling, probably about the time I went to college, that I would try to be a scholar and teacher, but I didn't know which field. - Author: Michael Spence

#8. The research side of academic life is often viewed from the outside as a solo and, at times, lonely activity. In fact, it is quite the opposite: a communal activity in significant part where interaction and interchange generate ideas and critiques of them. - Author: Michael Spence

#9. We tend to think that employment is employment, and we don't ask the question: is this rewarding employment? Research establishes pretty clearly that typical notions of happiness - that more is better - really don't correspond to the way people think and feel. - Author: Michael Spence

#10. Globalization is the process by which markets integrate worldwide. - Author: Michael Spence