When I was a graduate student, estimating and interpreting distributed lags topped the agenda of macroeconomists and other applied economists.

There was a danger that skeptics and opponents would misread those likelihood ratio tests as rejections of an entire class of models, which of course they were not.

The first and most optimistic response was complete rational expectations econometrics. A rational expectations equilibrium is a likelihood function. Maximize it.

I wasn't the brightest kid, not by a long shot. I was interested in football, in girls, in getting my work done with the least amount of effort.

What I really don't like is oversimplification.

I think you've got to watch out for anybody in high school who says he wants to become an economist.

I'm happy to say I am a Harrison-Kreps-Keynesian.

Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

През дрипите прозира всеки грях, а мантии и шуби скриват всичко!

When I got married, I hired a great choir - the St. James Choir, an all-black gospel choir - to sing at my wedding.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

But I still had to tell myself, Keep looking up. I will tell you, he isnt Superman for nothing.

The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears.

The number of business leaders who asked me to lower their taxes can be counted on one hand.

It's much easier to make jokes about not having kids.

There's a ball. There's a hoop. You put the ball through the hoop. That's success.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.