徐宽

Kuan Xu

Professor (Retired)

Home page: https://faculty.economics.dal.ca/kxu/index.html

Quotations on being/becoming an economist:

John Maynard Keynes (Essays in Biography , London: MacMillian and Co., 1933, pp. 170-171):

...The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must posess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as politician. ...

Paul A. Samulelson (Joseph E. Stiglitz (ed.), The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, Vol. 2, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1966, pp. 1759-1760):

...ask yourself what advice you would have to give to a young man who steps into your office with the following surprisingly common story: "I am interested in economic theory. I know little mathematics. And when I look at the journals, I am greatly troubled. Must I give up hopes of being a theorist? Must I learn mathematics? If yes, how much? I am already past twenty-one; am I past redemption?"

I think a better answer might go somewhat as follows: Some of the most distinguished economic theorists, past and present, have been innocent of mathematics. Some of the most distinguished theorists have known some degree of mathematics. Obviously, you can become a great theorist without knowing mathematics. Yet it is fair to say that you will have to be that much more clever and brilliant.

It happens to be empirically true that if you examine the training and backgound of all the past great economic theorists, a surprisingly high percentage had, or acquired, at least an intermediate mathematical training.