Kenneth Joseph Arrow

“What is a business organization, a manufacturing establishment? It is a social system.”

“Social choice theory is concerned with the relationship between individual preferences and collective decisions.”

“The price system is a mechanism for communicating information, and a very effective one at that.”

“In the absence of a market, there is a failure of the price system to transmit the information that is needed to create incentives.”

“Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.”

“Trust is an important lubricant of a social system.”

“Knowledge is a public good, and the private market system will tend to underinvest in it.”