...it is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.

Why, when the economist gives advice to his society, is he so often cooly ignored? He never ceases to preach free trade, and protectionism is growing in the United States. He deplores the perverse effects of minimum wage laws, and the legal minimum is regularly raised each 3 or 5 years. He brands usury laws as a medieval superstition, but no state hurries to repeal its law.

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

I met my wife, Margaret L. Mack, at the University of Chicago. We were married in 1936. She died in 1970.

It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation.

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.

Adam Smith had one overwhelmingly important triumph: he put into the center of economics the systematic analysis of the behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interest under conditions of competition.