Anyone with special abilities earns a differential return on that flair, which we economists call a rent. Those few with extraordinary P.Q. (Performance Quotient) will not give away such rent to the Ford Foundation or the local bank trust department. They have too high an I.Q. for that.

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.

You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life.

Reasonable men are not reasonable when you're in the bubbles which have characterized capitalism since the beginning of time.

I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble.

I don't care very much for the People Magazine approach to applied economics.

Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.