The key to good decision making is evaluating the available information - the data - and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses. As an economist, I do this every day.
The intriguing aspect of food charges on airlines is that they create the perfect laboratory for any economist who wishes to study the question of how to price a good that possesses, by universal consensus, absolutely no objective value.
In the 40 years I've been working as an economist and investor, I have never seen such a disconnect between the asset market and the economic reality... Asset markets are in the sky, and the economy of the ordinary people is in the dumps, where their real incomes adjusted for inflation are going down and asset markets are going up.
Obviously, no one knows when the market is going to bottom out, and I am certainly not an economist.
I think you've got to watch out for anybody in high school who says he wants to become an economist.
Becoming an economist was not a childhood dream of mine.
As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
I'm not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.
My ma is an economist. My dad is a software engineer.