Alan Blinder

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Life is not a multiple choice test, it's an open-book essay exam.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Book
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The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Bankers
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'Murphys law of economic policy': Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Law
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If you try to give an on-the-one-hand-or-the-other- hand answer, only one of the hands tends to get quoted.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Hands
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In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters. And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Cutting
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Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Democracy
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There is a kind of a cascading chain, ... If one can't sell, then that business doesn't buy and that means the next business doesn't sell, and the previous business doesn't sell, and so on.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Mean
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And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.
- Alan Blinder
Collection: Skills