Thomas J. Sargent

“People respond to incentives. The rest is commentary.”

“The essence of rational expectations is that people use all the information available to them to make forecasts about the future.”

“Persistent government deficits are inflationary because they are ultimately monetized.”

“Macroeconomics is the study of aggregates.”

“Unemployment is a side effect of the fact that the economy is always changing.”

“It's a mistake to think that the Fed is the only player in town.”

“A model is a simplification. It's not the real world.”

“Economics is organized common sense.”

“Rational expectations is a modeling strategy, not a belief about how the world works.”

“A government that is a good credit risk is one that the public believes will not have to resort to printing money to finance its expenditures.”

“It is not that people are perfectly rational, but that they are not systematically foolish.”