Abhijit Banerjee quotes

Sometimes economists are right, and sometimes economists are wrong. (Abhijit Banerjee)
I was an Indian with zero sense of caste till I was 20. That's an unusual privilege but it came out of the fact that I was a middle-class Bengali. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
We value seriousness and willingness to solve problems. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Healthcare expenses often wipe out families. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
When you compare individuals, rather than countries, you find that education improves both income and the quality of life. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
It is absolute poverty that you could end, but I think relative poverty is a whole other issue. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
My guess is that while the elites would like cleaner air, they are not willing to give up the convenience of being able to use their cars at will to get it, perhaps because they believe (I suspect incorrectly) that they can protect themselves from the consequences of vehicular pollution by investing in air-conditioners and air purifiers. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Anyone who has a child knows the importance of not over-playing your hand. He was up all night playing some game on his smartphone and you feel like saying that if it happens again the phone is gone. Forever. Till he is old enough to buy his own. Till then he can have your old Nokia. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Whenever we try something new, mistakes will happen. Seemingly good ideas will fail and need to be re-thought. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
I will confess that in general decisiveness worries me; it is often an excuse for being impatient with the details or insufficiently sensitive to other people's concerns. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Public conversations about who we are and who we want to be are key to the vitality of our democracy, and leaders can seed those conversations when they speak out their own views. (Abhijit Banerjee)
Most farmers know that their children's future will probably not be in agriculture, but they have a hard time imagining a different life. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Our democratic culture does not prioritise protecting an individual's right to live life her way, especially if that is not our way or the way of the community. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
In my own work, I have written about how our public sector bank officials avoid making any new lending decisions - because lending always exposes them to some (infinitesimal) risk of being blamed for the loan going wrong. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Milk production is one of India's great success stories. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
It is undeniable that the looming environmental crisis is partly the consequence of population growth. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
You have to take it seriously that the economy is in crisis. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Will we make all poverty history? No. But can we solve some of these extreme and egregious forms of poverty? I think yes, and we should. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Partly, identity politics is a result of economic failure. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
People who live inside garbage piles - that should not be happening. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
If democracy as we know it has to survive the elites have to regain their credibility. And they have to start by admitting that their economic model is broken. (Abhijit Banerjee)
Students often say things that they will one day change their minds about, but also things that change our minds when we think about them. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Corruption is a huge problem and the poor and the powerless are often its most egregious victims. But it is not an accident that the most effective bureaucracies in the world rely much more on internal controls rather than on independent ombudsmen. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee
Independence day is an interesting time to reflect on our strange fealty to institutions that the British left us, including those that were explicitly set up to be used against us. View quote
Abhijit Banerjee