LET’S STAY ONE MORE DAY BY ECONOMY
Overheard in
passing: one Oxford economics don speaking to another while walking along a street:
"And ninthly, ..."
An economics
limerick
Folks came from afar just to see Two Economists who'd agreed to agree.
While the event did take place,
It proved a disgrace;
They agreed one plus one adds to three.
A joke on the
streets of Moscow these days, according to World Bank
staffer John Nellis, goes this way: "Everything the Communists told us
about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately, everything the
Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be true."
A Scorpion
begged a Frog to carry him across the river because he could not swim. The Frog
hesitated for fearing being stung by the Scorpion. The Scorpion said:
"Don't worry, you know I won't sting you since we will both get drowned if
I do that". So the Frog carried Scorpion across the river. But in the
middle of the river, it happened--the Frog got a sting. Before he died, the Frog
asked Scorpion in disbelief: "I don't understand why you did this!?"
"Because I am not a game theorist and you are", replied the Scorpion.
A real story
A joke told at
Kobe University
English : "Can you make this theorem base on some experiences?"
German : "Can you make this theorem base on some basic theorems?"
French : "Can you make this theorem translate into French?"
Japanese : "Is your teacher a famous professor?"
INTEREST GROUP
ECONOMIST VIRUS - Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of
which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important
part of the computer.
ECONOMETRICIAN VIRUS - Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of
POLITICAL THINK TANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Doesn't do anything, but you can't get rid of it until next election.
GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST VIRUS - nothing works on your system, but all your diagnostic software says everything is just fine.
MARXIAN ECONOMIST VIRUS - Helps your computer shut down whenever it wants to.
SOVIET ECONOMIST VIRUS - Crashes your computer, but denies it ever happened.
MAINSTREAM ECONOMIST VIRUS - It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases then in "self-defense."
CENTRAL BANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION ECONOMIST VIRUS - Deletes all monetary files, but keeps smiling and sending messages about how the economy is going to get better.
SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMIST VIRUS - Puts your computer to sleep for four years. When your computer wakes up, you're trillion more dollars in debt.
NEW ECONOMY VIRUS - Also known as the "Tricky Dick Virus." You can wipe it out, but it always makes a comeback.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMIST VIRUS - Before allowing you to delete any file, it first asks you if you've considered the alternatives.
ECONOMETRICIAN VIRUS - Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of
POLITICAL THINK TANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Doesn't do anything, but you can't get rid of it until next election.
GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST VIRUS - nothing works on your system, but all your diagnostic software says everything is just fine.
MARXIAN ECONOMIST VIRUS - Helps your computer shut down whenever it wants to.
SOVIET ECONOMIST VIRUS - Crashes your computer, but denies it ever happened.
MAINSTREAM ECONOMIST VIRUS - It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases then in "self-defense."
CENTRAL BANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION ECONOMIST VIRUS - Deletes all monetary files, but keeps smiling and sending messages about how the economy is going to get better.
SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMIST VIRUS - Puts your computer to sleep for four years. When your computer wakes up, you're trillion more dollars in debt.
NEW ECONOMY VIRUS - Also known as the "Tricky Dick Virus." You can wipe it out, but it always makes a comeback.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMIST VIRUS - Before allowing you to delete any file, it first asks you if you've considered the alternatives.
Two economists
sit down to play chess. They study the board for 24 hours and declare a
stale-mate.
A friend of mine
was taking a class by Milton Friedman at the U of Chicago, and after a late night studying fell
asleep in class. This sent Friedman into a little tizzy and he came over and
pounded on the table, demanding an answer to a question he had just posed to
the class, my friend, shaken but now awake said " I'm sorry Professor, I
missed the question but the answer is increase the money supply."
What does it
take to be a good economist? An unshakeable grasp of the obvious!
" I have
come to appreaciate how Monetarists view the holiness of this principle 'Friedman's x% rule' by watching Friedman advising on the appropriate
monetary policy in diverse complex situations and each time coming up,
unfailingly, with the same practical answer: 3 percent."
Robert M. Solow,
addressing other economists on the Theory of Capital in 1962, "I have long
since abandoned the illusion that participants in this debate actually
communicate with one another. So I omit the standard polemical introduction,
and get down to business at once." It's good to see an empirical economic
discovery that has stood the test of time.
Heard at the University of Oslo campus
Dostojevskij-minimum:
When everyone is so bad off that no-one can be worse off without anyone getting
better off. (Beware of the second-order
condition!)
Achieving free
trade is like getting to heaven. Everyone one wants to get there, but not too
soon.
Value of human
capital
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.
As every engineer knows,
Work
---------- = Power
Time
Since Knowledge = Power, and Time =Money, we have
Work
--------- = Knowledge
Money
Solving for Money, we get:
Work
----------- = Money
Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity regardless of the Work done.
Conclusion: The Less you Know, the more money you Make.
A traveller
wandering on an island inhabited entirely by cannibals comes upon a butcher
shop. This shop specialised in human brains differentiated according to source.
The sign in the shop read:
Artists' Brains $9/lb Philosophers' Brains $12/lb
Scientists' Brains $15/lb
Economists' Brains $19/lb
Upon reading the sign, the traveller noted, "My those economists' brains must be popular!" To which the butcher replied, "Are you kidding! Do you have any idea how many economists you have to kill to get a pound of brains?!"
HA! ... It's a *supply side* joke!
President Truman
once said he wants an economic adviser who is one handed. Why? Because normally
the economists giving him economic advice state "On one hand and on the
other..."
The Commerce
Department has a 46-page application packet for economists to seeking to run
its leading economic index, but the packet warns: "the government will
evaluate only the first 25 pages of a written proposal."
In Canada there is a small radical group that
refuses to speak english and no one can understand them. They are called
separatists. In this country (USA) we have the same kind of group. They
are called economists.
An economist was
asked about the meaning of life. He replied:
It depends on the parameter values.
It depends on the parameter values.
On the first day
God created the sun - so the Devil countered and created sunburn. On the second
day God created sex. In response the Devil created marriage. On the third day
God created an economist. This was a tough one for the Devil, but in the end
and after a lot of thought he created a second economist!
Three leading
economists took a small plane to the wilderness in northern Canada to hunt moose over the weekend. The
last thing the pilot said was , remember, this is a very small plane and you
will only be able to bring ONE moose back.
But of course, they killed one
each and come sunday, they talked the pilot into letting them bring all three
dead moose onboard. So just after takeoff, the plane stalled and crashed. In
the wreckage, one of the economists woke up, looked around and said. where the
hell are we. Oh, just about a hundred yards east of the place there we crashed
last year.
"Economic
man" never gets a hang-over, if he doesn't decide that the advantages of
acquiring it exceed the draw-backs.
Everybody has a
comparative advantage in some respect, provided that performances are not
entirely in the third quadrant.
"This man
is a first year economics student, so we can't show you his friends."
An Economist is
someone who didn't have enough personality to become an accountant.
An economist is
someone who knows 100 ways to make love, but doesn't know any women/men.
Q: What is a
recent economics graduate's usual question in his first job?
A: What would you like to have
with your french fries sir?
An economist
returns to visit his old school. He's interested in the current exam questions
and asks his old professor to show some. To his surprise they are exactly the
same ones to which he had answered 10 years ago! When he asks about this the
professor answers: "the questions are always the same - only the answers
change!"
Economics is
extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
A central banker
walks into a pizzeria to order a pizza.
When the pizza is done, he goes
up to the counter get it. There a clerk asks him: "Should I cut it into
six pieces or eight pieces?" The central banker replies: "I'm feeling rather hungry right now. You'd better cut it into eight pieces."
Reproduced below
is an Economist Joke that illustrates the separate facilities solution to an
externality problem.
Three guys decide to play a round
of golf: a priest, a psychologist, and an economist. They get behind a *very* slow two-some, who, despite a caddy, are taking all day to line up their shots and four-putting every green, and so on. By the 8th hole, the three men are complaining loudly about the slow play ahead and swearing a blue streak, and so on. The priest says, "Holy Mary, I pray that they should take some lessons before they play again." The psychologist says, "I swear there are people that like to play golf slowly." The economist says, "I really didn't expect to spend this much time playing a round of golf."
By the 9th hole, they have had it with slow play, so the psychologist goes to the caddy and demands that they be allowed to play through. The caddy says O.K., but then explains that the two golfers are blind, that both are retired firemen who lost their eyesight saving people in a fire, and that explains their slow play, and would they please not swear and complain so loud.
The priest is mortified; he says, "Here I am a man of the cloth and I've been swearing at the slow play of two blind men." The psychologist is also mortified; he says, "Here I am a man trained to help others with their problems and I've been complaining about the slow play of two blind men."
The economist ponders the situation-finally he goes back to the caddy and says, "Listen, the next time could they play at night."
A physicist, a
chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can
of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a
rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire and heat the can first."
The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener..."
Q: What's the
difference between a finance major and an economics major?
A: Opportunity Cost
An economist, a
philosopher, a biologist, and an architect were were arguing about what was
God's real profession. The philosopher said, "Well, first and foremost,
God is a philosopher because he created the principles by which man is to
live." "Ridiculous!" said the biologist "Before that, God
created man and woman and all living things so clearly he was a biologist."
"Wrong," said the architect. "Before that, he created the
heavens and the earth. Before the earth, there was only complete confusion and
chaos!" "Well," said the economist, "where do you think the
chaos came from?"
The First Law of
Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The Second Law of Economists:
They're both wrong.
pkm's existence
theorem: for every finite set of answers there exists an infinite set of novel
models
If all the
economists were laid end to end
a) it would be a good thing b) they would be more comfortable
c) they would never reach conclusion
d) all of the above
e) none of the above
f) they would point in different directions
Two economists
are walking down the street. One sees a dollar lying on the sidewalk, and says
so.
"Obviously not," says
the other. "If there were, someone would have picked it up!" PS. Replace the dollar with a relevant research idea and you get a new joke.
We have 2
classes of forecasters: Those who don't know . . . and those who don't know
they don't know.
An economist is
an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't
happen today.
A study of
economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is last year.
Having a little
inflation is like being a little pregnant--inflation feeds on itself and
quickly passes the "little" mark.
I don't think
you can spend yourself rich.
If all
economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.
Practical men
... are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. economist
If you put two
economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in
which case you get three opinions.
Shall I tell you
the opinion of a famous economist on jealousy? Jealousy is just the fact of
being deprived. Nothing more.
Stephen M.
Goldfeld, in _The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking_. November, 1984, p. 611:
"An economist is someone who sees something working in practice and asks
whether it would work in principle."
Economists don't
answer to questions others make because they know what the answer is. They
answer because they are asked.
There is also a
joke about the last Mayday parade in the Soviet Union. After the tanks and the troops and the
planes and the missiles rolled by there came ten men dressed in black.
"Are they Spies?" Asked
Gorby? "They are economists," replies the KGB director, "imagine the havoc they will wreak when we set them loose on the Americans"
The
mathematician's child and the economist's child were in the third grade
together, and the teacher asked, "If one man with one shovel can dig a
ditch in ten days, how long would it take ten men with ten shovels to dig the
same ditch?" Both children raised their hands.
The teacher said to the
mathematician's child, "Johnny, how long?" and little Johnny v. said,
"One day, teacher." The teacher looked at the economist's child and said, "John Maynard, is that right?"
Little John Maynard said, "Teacher, it all depends."
Most of the
following jokes were forwarded to me by Russell Gum to whom I owe a big thanks.
"Having a house economist
became for many business people something like havinga resident astrologer for
the royal court: I don't quite understand what this fellow is saying but there
must be something to it."
The following
joke is a joint invention of Preston
McAfee, Phil Reny and several so far anonymous writers.
Why God Never Received Tenure at
the University 1. Because he had only one major publication.
2. And it was in Hebrew.
3. And it had no cited references.
4. And it wasn't published in a refereed journal or even submitted for peer review.
5. And some even doubt he wrote it himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world but what has he done since?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate his results.
9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry, he tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
11. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he often punished them, or just deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. He had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
A sure fire way
to determine if someone is an economist: Ask the suspect "what's the
difference between ignorance and indifference?" If the reply is "I
don't know and I don't care" you can be pretty sure its an economist. Now
the only question is what to do with him.
If an economist
and an IRS agent were both drowning and you could only save one of them, would
you go to lunch or read the paper?
The National
Institute of Health (NIH) announced that they were going to start using
economists instead of rats in their experiments. Naturally, the American
Agricultural Economics Association was outraged and filed suit, but NIH
presented some compelling reasons for the switch:
1) NIH lab assistants become very
attached to their rats. This emotional involvement was interfering with the
research being conducted. No such attachment could form for an economist. 2) Economists breed faster.
3) Economists are much cheaper to care for and PETA won't object regardless of the experiment.
4) There are some things even rats won't do.
However, it is difficult to extrapolate test results to human beings.
How many
economists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
1. Just one, but it really gets
screwed. 2. One to prepare the proposal, an econometrician to run the model, one each MS and PhD students to write the theses and dissertations, two more to prepare the journal article (senior authorship not assigned), four to review it, and at least as many to refine the model and replicate the results.
Why do
economists carry their diplomas on their dashboards?
So they can park in the (morally/intellectually) handicapped parking.
So they can park in the (morally/intellectually) handicapped parking.
A guy walks into
a DC curio shop. While browsing he comes across an exquisite brass rat.
"What a great gag gift" he thinks to himself. After dickering with
the shop keeper over the price, the man purchases the rat and leaves. As he's
walking down the street, he hears scurrying noises behind him. Stopping and
looking around, he sees hundreds, then thousands of rats pouring out of the
alleys and stairwells into the street behind him. In a panic he runs down the
street with the rats not far behind. The street ends at a pier; he runs to the
end of the pier and heaves the brass rat into the Potomac. All of the rats scurry past him into
the river where they drown. After breathing a sigh of relief and wiping his
brow, the man heads back to the curio shop, finds the shop keeper and asks,
"Do you have any brass economists?"
TEN THINGS TO DO
WITH A GRADUATE ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK
1. Press pretty flowers. 2. Press pretty insects.
3. Use it as paper weight on your already overcluttered desk.
4. Leave out in obvious places to impress uninformed undergraduates.
5. Mail to the White House as an intimidation tactic.
6. Give it a walk-on part in a boring European existentialist play.
7. Just throw the damn thing away.
8. Leave out for the rain and other forces of nature to reckon with.
9. Read it (ha ha ha), and weep.
10. Get a refund from bookstore so you can buy weekend's beer supply.
How can you tell
when an economist is lying?
His lips are moving.
His lips are moving.
Why won't sharks
attack economists?
Professional courtesy.
Professional courtesy.
Q: What do you
get when you cross the Godfather with an economist?
A: An offer you can't
understand.
Q: How many
economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Hell, you need a whole
department of them just to prepare the research grant.
They say that
Christopher Columbus was the first economist. When he left to discover America, he didn't know where he was going.
When he got there he didn't know where he was. And it was all done on a
government grant.
A grade school
teacher was asking students what their parents did for a living. "Tim, you
be first. What does your mother do all day?"
Tim stood up and proudly said,
"She's a doctor." "That's wonderful. How about you, Amy?"
Amy shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a mailman."
"Thank you, Amy" said the teacher. "What does your parent do, Billy?"
Billy proudly stood up and announced,
1. "Nothing. He's an economist."
2. "My daddy plays piano in a whorehouse." The teacher was aghast and went to Billy's house and rang the bell. Billy's father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation. Billy's dad said, "I'm actually an economist. How can I explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?"
A Berkeley economist died and went to heaven (No,
that's not the joke). There were thousands of people ahead of him in line to
see St. Peter. To his surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and came
down the long line to where the economist was, and greeted him warmly. St. Peter took the economist up to the
front of the line, and into a comfortable chair by his desk. The economist
said, "I like all this attention, but what makes ME so special?" St.
Peter replied, "Well, I've added up all the hours for which you billed
your consultation clients, and by my calculation you're 193 years old!"
A Chicago economist died in poverty and many
local futures traders donated to a fund for his funeral. The president of (the
Merc, the Board of Trade, etc.) was asked to donate a dollar. "Only a
buck?" said the president, "only a dollar to bury an economist? Here's
a check; go bury 1000 of them."
An economist and
a physician had a dispute over precedence. They referred it to Diogenes, who
gave it in favor of the economist as follows: "Let the thief go first, and
the executioner follow."
What's the
difference between mathematics and economics?
Mathematics is incomprehensible;
economics just doesn't make any sense.
A judge was
hearing a drunk-driving case and the defendant, who had both a record and a
reputation for driving under the influence, demanded a jury trial. It was
nearly 4 p.m. and
getting a jury would take time, so the judge called a recess and went out in
the hall looking to empanel anyone available. He found a dozen economists and
told them that they were a jury. The economists thought this would be a novel
experience (none had ever been at a trial before, except as a defendent or an
expert witness) and followed the judge into the courtroom. The trial was over
in about 10 minutes and it was very clear that the defendant was guilty. The
jury went into the jury-room, the judge started getting ready to go home, and
everyone waited. After three hours, the judge sent the bailiff into the jury-
room to see what was holding up the verdict. When the bailiff returned, the
judge said, "Well, have they arrived at a verdict yet?" The bailiff
shook his head and said, "Verdict? Hell, Judge, they're still doing
nominating speeches for the foreman's position!"
For three years,
the young assistant professor took his vacations at a country inn. He had an
affair with the innkeeper's daughter. Looking forward to an exciting few days,
he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn, then stopped short. There sat
his lover with an infant on her lap! "Why didn't you write when you
learned you were pregnant?" he cried. "I would have rushed up here,
we could have gotten married, and the child would have my name!"
"Well," she said, "when my folks found out about my condition,
we sat up all night talkin' and talkin' and we finally decided it would be better
to have a bastard in the family than an economist."
Santa Claus, the
tooth fairy, a practical economist, and an old drunk are walking down the
street together when they simultaneously spot a hundred dollar bill. Who gets
it? The old drunk, of course, the other three are mythological creatures.
A Harvard
economist had a summer house in the Maine woods. Each summer he'd invite a
different friend (no, that's not the punch line) to spend a week or two. On one
occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian to stay with him. They had a splendid
time in the country - rising early and living in the great outdoors. Early one
morning they went out to pick berries for their morning breakfast. As they went
around the berry patch along came two huge bears. The economist dashed for
cover. His friend wasn't so lucky and the male bear reached him and swallowed
him whole. The economist ran back to his car, drove to town as fast has he
could, and got the sheriff. The sheriff grabbed his rifle and dashed back to
the berry patch with the economist. Sure enough, both bears were still there.
"He's in THAT one!" cried the economist, pointing to the male. The
sheriff looked at the bears, and without batting an eye, leveled his gun, took
careful aim, and SHOT THE FEMALE. "Whatd'ya do that for?!" exclaimed
the economist, "I said he was in the other!" "Yep," said
the sheriff, "and would YOU believe a economist who told you that the
Czech was in the Male?"
WASHINGTON DC GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST HUNTING
REGULATIONS AND BAG LIMITS
GENERAL
Any
person with a valid Washington DC hunting license or a Federal Income Tax
Return may harvest government economists.
2. Taking of economists with traps or deadfalls is permitted. The use of currency as bait is prohibited.
3. Killing of economists with a vehicle is prohibited. If one is accidentally struck, remove the dead economist to side of the road and proceed to the nearest car wash.
4. It is unlawful to chase, herd, or harvest economists from limousines, Mercedes Benz's, the Metro, or Porsches.
5. It shall be unlawful to shout "research contract" or "I need a policy consultant" for the purpose of trapping economists.
6. It shall be unlawful to hunt economists within 100 feet of government buildings.
7. It shall be unlawful to use decision memos, draft legislation, conference reports, or RFP's to attract economists.
8. It shall be unlawful to hunt economists within 200 feet of Senate or House hearing rooms, libraries, whorehouses, massage parlors, special interest group offices, bars, or strip joints.
9. If an economist is elected to government office, it shall be a felony to hunt, trap, or possess it. It will also be a shame.
10. Stuffed or mounted economists must have a DC Health Department inspection certificate for rabies and vermin.
11. It shall be illegal for a hunter to disguise as a reporter, drug dealer, pimp, female congressional aid, sheep, legislator, policy maker, bookie, lobbyist, or tax accountant for the purpose of hunting economists.
2. Taking of economists with traps or deadfalls is permitted. The use of currency as bait is prohibited.
3. Killing of economists with a vehicle is prohibited. If one is accidentally struck, remove the dead economist to side of the road and proceed to the nearest car wash.
4. It is unlawful to chase, herd, or harvest economists from limousines, Mercedes Benz's, the Metro, or Porsches.
5. It shall be unlawful to shout "research contract" or "I need a policy consultant" for the purpose of trapping economists.
6. It shall be unlawful to hunt economists within 100 feet of government buildings.
7. It shall be unlawful to use decision memos, draft legislation, conference reports, or RFP's to attract economists.
8. It shall be unlawful to hunt economists within 200 feet of Senate or House hearing rooms, libraries, whorehouses, massage parlors, special interest group offices, bars, or strip joints.
9. If an economist is elected to government office, it shall be a felony to hunt, trap, or possess it. It will also be a shame.
10. Stuffed or mounted economists must have a DC Health Department inspection certificate for rabies and vermin.
11. It shall be illegal for a hunter to disguise as a reporter, drug dealer, pimp, female congressional aid, sheep, legislator, policy maker, bookie, lobbyist, or tax accountant for the purpose of hunting economists.
1. Econometrician: 2
2. Two-faced Policy Analyst: 1
3. Macro Policy Wonk: 4
4. Big-mouthed Populist: 2
5. Relevant Economist: EXTINCT
6. Cut-throat Administration Seeker: 2
7. Back-stabbing Senior Author: 2
8. Brown-nosed Deputy Kisser: 2
9. Silver-tongued Congressional Consultant:; $100 BOUNTY
10. Wise-assed CivilLibertarian: 7 11. Staff economist: NO LIMIT
Given 1000
economists, there will be 10 theoretical economists with different theories on
how to change the light bulb and 990 empirical economists laboring to determine
which theory is the *correct* one, and everyone will still be in the dark.
