British - Economist | April 8, 1962 -
The two questions that anyone ever asks me are: 'Are house prices going to go down?' and 'Is it a good time to fix my mortgage rate?'
Evan Davis
GoodTimeMeQuestionsHouseDown
The key thing about me is that I'm really not very interesting.
MeKeyInterestingVeryReally
I've never enjoyed sleep as much until I got the 'Today' job. There is something about early sleep that's much better than late sleep. I feel myself going to sleep; I don't just plonk my head on the pillow. It's a sort of winding-down thing.
TodayMyselfJobSleepBetterEarly
What is so striking about Liberia is that in a place where there is so much to be done, I have never seen so many people with nothing to do.
PeoplePlaceDoneNothingNever
Interestingly, human irrationality is a hot topic in economics at the moment. Behavioural economics it's called, on the cusp of economics and psychology.
MomentEconomicsHotHumanCusp
Put simply, behavioural economics argues that human beings' decision-taking is guided by the evolutionary baggage which we bring with us to the present day. Evolution has made us rational to a point, but not perfectly so. It has given us emotions, for example, which programme us to override our rational brain and act more instinctively.
DayBrainEconomicsPresentEmotions
Personally, I don't see old economics and behavioural economics as opposed. It is useful to assume people are rational as a good approximation to their long term behaviour, but it would be unwise not to think how in practice their behaviour may deviate from that simplifying assumption.
GoodPracticePeopleEconomicsThink
Although being economics editor sounds impressive, it does not mean I actually edit anything. It mainly reflects two decades of title-inflation at the BBC, which has given ever more status to senior reporters, presumably because it is cheaper to do that than to offer higher pay.
EconomicsMoreMeanPayAnything
But beginners to the World Economics Forum have to understand there is no single Davos experience, and there is no single Davos community either. There are numerous tribes who interact only at a minimal level.
CommunityExperienceEconomicsWorld
Some people harbour an awkward clash of feelings - homosexual attraction on the one hand and shame or embarrassment about that attraction on the other. It is well known that the mind struggles to sustain conflicting views.
PeopleMindFeelingsHandShame
All socio-political phenomena in the U.K. come laden with the baggage of a class-based theory or two attached to them. In the case of gay Tories, there is one particularly silly variant of the category, which asserts that gayness is bred in public schools and thus fits with Conservatism like hand in glove.
SillyGayHandTwoTheoryBaggage
Even the 'Today' programme involves a balance between the worthy-but-heavy items with the worthless-but-entertainingly-light ones.
TodayBalanceBetweenEvenItems
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Evan Davis quotes