Robert Solow Quotes

#1. Growth theory did not begin with my articles of 1956 and 1957, and it certainly did not end there. Maybe it began with 'The Wealth of Nations'; and probably even Adam Smith had predecessors.

Robert Solow

#2. We have fluctuations all the time, business cycles, and they come about in various ways, but normally what sets them off is some reduction in the willingness of our population, our businesses, and foreigners to buy.

Robert Solow

#3. You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

Robert Solow

#4. Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers.

Robert Solow

#5. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.

Robert Solow

#6. But part of the job of economics is weeding out errors. That is much harder than making them, but also more fun.

Robert Solow

#7. The fact that there is no such thing as a perfect anti-sepsis does not mean that one might as well do brain surgery in a sewer.

Robert Solow

#8. Computers show up everywhere except the growth statistics.

Robert Solow

#9. Why does a public discussion of economic policy so often show the abysmal ignorance of the participants?

Robert Solow

#10. If God had meant there to be more than two factors of production, He would have made it easier for us to draw three-dimension al diagrams.

Robert Solow

#11. There is not some glorious theoretical synthesis of capitalism that you can write down in a book and follow. You have to grope your way

Robert Solow

#12. The wealth-income ratio in the United States has always been lower than in Europe. The main reason in the early years was that land values bulked less in the wide open spaces of North America. There was, of course, much more land, but it was very cheap.

Robert Solow

#13. I remember once reading that it is still not understood how the giraffe manages to pump an adequate blood supply all the way up to its head; but it is hard to imagine that anyone would conclude tht giraffes do not have long necks. At least not anyone who had ever been to a zoo

Robert Solow

#14. The key thing about wealth in a capitalist economy is that it reproduces itself and usually earns a positive net return.

Robert Solow