Jokes in Economics & about Economist

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An old joke applied to economists.
One night a policeman saw a macroeconomist looking for something buy a lightpole.  He asked him is had had lost something there.  The economist said, "I lost my keyes over in the alley."  The policeman asked him why he was looking by the lightpole.  The economist responded, "it's a lot easier to look over here."

This tale is said to be told by John Kenneth Galbraith on himself. As a boy he lived on a farm in Canada. On the adjoining farm, lived a girl he was fond of.  One day as they sat together on the top rail of the cattle pen they watced a bull servicing a cow. Galbraith turned to the girl, with what he hoped was a suggestive look, saying,  "That looks like it would be fun."  She replied, "Well....she's your cow."

An economist is someone who gets rich explaining others why they are poor.
Not a joke as such, but (a true story, apparently, as told by a Finance lecturer at LSE):
An economist was about to give a presentation in Washington, DC on the problems with Black-Scholes model of option pricing and was expecting no more than a dozen of government officials attending (who would bother?). To his amazement, when he arrived, the room was packed with edgy, tough-looking guys in shades. Still, after five or so minutes into the presentation all of them stood up and left without a word. The economist found out only later
that his secretary ran the presentation through a spell-checker and what was "The Problem with Black-Scholes" became  "The Problem with Black Schools", a rather more fascinating subject.

The last severe depression and banking crisis could not have been achieved by normal civil servants and politicians, it required economists involvement.
"I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong."
- J.M.Keynes; Found in Forbes magazine 01/25/1999 issue.  In the Numbers Game column by Bernard Cohen 

A joke from the October 1992 Reader's Digest, the Best Medicine section:
"I'm thinking of leaving my husband," complained the economist's wife.
"All he ever does is stand at the end of the bed and tell me how good things are going to be." 

Q: Why do social workers refuse to sleep with economists?
A: They have learned its a sunk cost. 

Q: Why do Economists provide estimates of inflation to the nearest tenth of a percent?
A: To prove they have a sense of humour. 

"Economic statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is important, what they conceal is vital"
- Attributed to Professor Sir Frank Holmes, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, 1967. 

"An economist is a person who confronted with a eight foot high wall, immediately assumes he is ten feet tall."
- Attributed to John Zanetti, Senior Lecturer, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand 1971. 

Contagion: A strory demostrating the possible outcomes from interlinkages in the financial markets.
Back during the Solidarity days, I heard that the following joke was being told in Poland:
A man goes into the Bank of Gdansk to make a deposit. Since he has never kept money in a bank before, he is a little nervous.
"What happens if the Bank of Gdansk should fail?" he asks.
"Well, in that case your money would be insured by the Bank of Warsaw."
"But, what if the Bank of Warsaw fails?"
"Well, there'd be no problem, because the Bank of Warsaw is insured by the National Bank of Poland."
"And if the National Bank of Poland fails?"
"Then your money would be insured by the Bank of Moscow."
"And what if the Bank of Moscow fails?"
"Then your money would be insured by the Great Bank of the Soviet Union."
"And if that bank fails?"
"Well, in that case, you'd lose all your money. But, wouldn't it be worth it?"

Seven habits that help produce the anything-but-efficient markets that rule the world by Paul Krugman in Fortune.

1. Think short term.
2. Be greedy.
3. Believe in the greater fool
4. Run with the herd.
5. Overgeneralize
6. Be trendy
7. Play with other people's money

These deep thoughts of colleague economists were originally collected by Hiroyuki Kawakatsu
How to do research
Keep the ass to the chair.
-James Buchanan
Everything has been thought before, but the problem is to think of it again.
-Goethe
Concepts without perceptions are empty; perceptions without concepts are blind.
-Kant
Mathematics has no symbols for confused ideas.
-George Stigler
All models are wrong but some are useful.
-George Box
Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
-J. Tukey
The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
-A. Whitehead
In the long-run, there's just another short-run.
-Abba Lerner
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
-Kierkegaard
Someone once said about partisan analysts that they use economic data the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination. Or as Disraeli put it, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
-Paul Krugman
Theories are testable where they are least needed, and are not testable where they are most needed.
-Charles Manski
If you torture the data long enough, Nature will confess.
-Ronald Coase
There are two things you are better off not watching in the making: sausages and econometric estimates.
-Edward Leamer
Doing econometrics is like trying to learn the laws of electricity by playing the radio.
-Guy Orcutt
Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.
-Charles Goodhart
Time series regression studies give no sign of converging toward the truth.
-Phillip Cagan
Any time series regression containing more than four independent variables results in garbage
-Zvi Griliches
Forecasting is like trying to drive a car blindfolded and following directions given by a person who is looking out of the back window
-Anonymous
Given the choice between Bob Solow and an econometric model to make forecasts, I'd choose Bob Solow; but I'd rather have Bob Solow with an econometric model, than Bob Solow without one
-Paul Samuelson
Keep in mind the three most important aspects of real data analysis: compromise, compromise, and compromise.
-Edward Leamer

The four golden rules of econometrics:
1.Think brilliantly,
2.Be infinitely creative,
3.Be outstandingly lucky,
4.Otherwise, stick to being a theorist
-David Hendry

A good empirical study requires three components:
1.A concise and sensible theoretical framework that is related to the questions to be asked,
2.Reasonably good data, and
3.An experiment or an event or a set of circumstances that give the data a chance to answer the questions asked. In short, the model needs to be identifiable from the data at hand.
-Zvi Griliches  

Two students of economics at lunch:
Student 1" 'Do you know what are the two most important degrees in economics?"
Student 2:"The MSc and the PhD?" Student 1:"No, the zeroth and the first!" 

Phelson's Law (or so I was told)
Copying an idea from an author is plagiarism. Copying many ideas from many authors is... research !! 
In explaining why she felt our relationship had problems, a former girlfriend (an English teacher) told me that the problem was that I was so ... so ... reasonable. (David Colander) 

+A voice from history.
"Not all Germans believe in God but they believe in the Bundesbank"
Jacques Delors former president of European Commission
in FT December 15,1998

+ Overheard in passing: one Oxford economics don speaking to another while walking along a street: "And ninthly, ..."
from Albert Clack in London.

+ I made this one up my own self in about 1984 - the government ecologist I was dating was tired of all the ecologist jokes told by his economist colleagues. (How many ecologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Eight - one to turn the lightbulb and seven to do the environmental impact study.) ---

+A real story

One day, the professor who taught Money and Banking in Buenos Aires told us: "I do not know if you will find a job as economists, but am sure you will know why you are going to be poor"

+ An economics limerick

Folks came from afar just to see
Two Economists who'd agreed to agree.
While the event did take place,
It proved a disgrace;
They agreed one plus one adds to three. Robley E. George

+ A joke on the streets of Moscow these days, according to World Bank staffer John Nellis, goes this way: "Everything the Communists told us about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately, everything the Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be true."

+ A Scorpion begged a Frog to carry him across the river because he could not swim. The Frog hesitated for fearing being stung by the Scorpion. The Scorpion said: "Don't worry, you know I won't sting you since we will both get drowned if I do that". So the Frog carried Scorpion across the river. But in the middle of the river, it happened--the Frog got a sting. Before he died, the Frog asked Scorpion in disbelief: "I don't understand why you did this!?" "Because I am not a game theorist and you are", replied the Scorpion. Contributed by Ding Lu

+ A real story

Last year at the SEA meetings in Baltimore, I was in the elevator and witnessed the following: the elevator gets to the lobby, and there is a woman (economist) waiting to get in and a man (economist) waiting to get out. The woman pauses to allow the man to exit first, the man pauses to allow the woman to enter the elevator first. After a couple of seconds of just standing there, they both make a move for the door - but as each sees the other moving, they pause again to allow the other to go first. More standing still occurs until finally the door starts to close. The man in the elevator jabs his arm out at the last instant to prevent the doors from closing, and the two stumble past each other as they simultaneous switch places. The door finally closes, and as the elevator starts to move the economist is heard to say, under her breath, "Manners are never optimal."
- Edward Bierhanzl

+ A joke told at Kobe University

The new theorem was published and it aroused discussion.
English : "Can you make this theorem base on some experiences?"
German : "Can you make this theorem base on some basic theorems?"
French : "Can you make this theorem translate into French?"
Japanese : "Is your teacher a famous professor?"

INTEREST GROUP ECONOMIST VIRUS - Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of the computer.
ECONOMETRICIAN VIRUS - Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of
POLITICAL THINK TANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Doesn't do anything, but you can't get rid of it until next election.
GOVERNMENT ECONOMIST VIRUS - nothing works on your system, but all your diagnostic software says everything is just fine.
MARXIAN ECONOMIST VIRUS - Helps your computer shut down whenever it wants to.
SOVIET ECONOMIST VIRUS - Crashes your computer, but denies it ever happened.
MAINSTREAM ECONOMIST VIRUS - It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases then in "self-defense."
CENTRAL BANK ECONOMIST VIRUS - Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION ECONOMIST VIRUS - Deletes all monetary files, but keeps smiling and sending messages about how the economy is going to get better.
SUPPLY

A friend of mine was taking a class by Milton Friedman at the U of Chicago, and after a late night studying fell asleep in class. This sent Friedman into a little tizzy and he came over and pounded on the table, demanding an answer to a question he had just posed to the class, my friend, shaken but now awake said " I'm sorry Professor, I missed the question but the answer is increase the money supply."

We love it on the floor of the CBOT. 
What does it take to be a good economist? An unshakeable grasp of the obvious! 

" I have come to appreaciate how Monetarists view the holiness of this principle ['Friedman's x% rule'] by watching Friedman advising on the appropriate monetary policy in diverse complex situations and each time coming up, unfailingly, with the same practical answer: 3 percent."
-Franco Modigliani
Contemporary Policy Issues (1988) 6 October 

Robert M. Solow, addressing other economists on the Theory of Capital in 1962, "I have long since abandoned the illusion that participants in this debate actually communicate with one another. So I omit the standard polemical introduction, and get down to business at once." It's good to see an empirical economic discovery that has stood the test of time.

Introductory lines to his "In the Theory of Capital", XXIV (June 1962), 207-218, Review of Economic Studies. 
Two economists sit down to play chess. They study the board for 24 hours and declare a stale-mate. 

Heard at the University of Oslo campus

We all know what pareto optimal allocation means... What about Jesus-optimal allocation -- when all persons are equally well off, and one person _really_ gets it bad, worse off, while all the rest are much better off... 

Dostojevskij-minimum: When everyone is so bad off that no-one can be worse off without anyone getting better off. (Beware of the second-order condition!) 
Achieving free trade is like getting to heaven. Everyone one wants to get there, but not too soon. 

Value of human capital

Engineers and scientists will never make as much money as business executives. Now a rigorous mathematical proof that explains why this is true:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows,

Work
---------- = Power
Time

Since Knowledge = Power, and Time =Money, we have

Work
--------- = Knowledge
Money

Solving for Money, we get:

Work
----------- = Money
Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity regardless of the Work done.
Conclusion: The Less you Know, the more money you Make.  

A traveller wandering on an island inhabited entirely by cannibals comes upon a butcher shop. This shop specialised in human brains differentiated according to source. The sign in the shop read:
Artists' Brains $9/lb
Philosophers' Brains $12/lb
Scientists' Brains $15/lb
Economists' Brains $19/lb

Upon reading the sign, the traveller noted, "My those economists' brains must be popular!" To which the butcher replied, "Are you kidding! Do you have any idea how many economists you have to kill to get a pound of brains?!"
HA! ... It's a *supply side* joke!  

President Truman once said he wants an economic adviser who is one handed. Why? Because normally the economists giving him economic advice state "On one hand and on the other..." 

The Commerce Department has a 46-page application packet for economists to seeking to run its leading economic index, but the packet warns: "the government will evaluate only the first 25 pages of a written proposal."
The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 1995 

In Canada there is a small radical group that refuses to speak english and no one can understand them. They are called separatists. In this country (USA) we have the same kind of group. They are called economists.
Nation's Business 

An economist was asked about the meaning of life. He replied:
It depends on the parameter values. 

On the first day God created the sun - so the Devil countered and created sunburn. On the second day God created sex. In response the Devil created marriage. On the third day God created an economist. This was a tough one for the Devil, but in the end and after a lot of thought he created a second economist!
CHEER February 1993 

Three leading economists took a small plane to the wilderness in northern Canada to hunt moose over the weekend. The last thing the pilot said was , remember, this is a very small plane and you will only be able to bring ONE moose back.

But of course, they killed one each and come sunday, they talked the pilot into letting them bring all three dead moose onboard. So just after takeoff, the plane stalled and crashed. In the wreckage, one of the economists woke up, looked around and said. where the hell are we. Oh, just about a hundred yards east of the place there we crashed last year. 

"Economic man" never gets a hang-over, if he doesn't decide that the advantages of acquiring it exceed the draw-backs. 
Everybody has a comparative advantage in some respect, provided that performances are not entirely in the third quadrant. 
"This man is a first year economics student, so we can't show you his friends." - Tim Ferguson, DAAS Farewell Tour, 1994 

An Economist is someone who didn't have enough personality to become an accountant. 
An economist is someone who knows 100 ways to make love, but doesn't know any women/men. 

Q: What is a recent economics graduate's usual question in his first job?
A: What would you like to have with your french fries sir?  k

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