Robert Lucas Jr.

Economists should be humble about their ability to predict the future.

The most important thing about economic models is that they force you to be precise about your assumptions.

The welfare gains from eliminating business cycles are surprisingly small.

The problem of economic policy is to design institutions that induce people to behave in socially desirable ways.

The rational expectations hypothesis is a statement about how people use information, not about how much information they have.

The goal of economic theory is to provide a coherent framework for understanding economic phenomena.

The most important thing is to get the incentives right.

The 'Lucas Critique' is a warning against naive policy analysis.

The idea of rational expectations is a natural extension of the idea of rational behavior.

The challenge for economists is to build models that are both theoretically sound and empirically relevant.

The most important thing I learned from Milton Friedman was the importance of empirical work.

The problem of economic development is fundamentally a problem of human capital accumulation.

The rational expectations hypothesis is a powerful tool for analyzing the effects of policy.

The goal of economic research is to discover general principles that apply across a wide range of situations.

The most important thing is to be clear about what you are assuming.

The 'Lucas Critique' is a fundamental insight into the nature of economic policy.

The idea of rational expectations is that people don't make systematic errors.

The challenge for macroeconomics is to explain the observed fluctuations in economic activity.

The most important thing is to ask the right questions.

The rational expectations hypothesis is a powerful tool for understanding how markets work.