Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 312 of the late University of Washington economist Paul Heyne‘s deeply wise 1995 article in Agenda titled “Teaching Introductory Economics,” as it’s reprinted in the 2008 collection of Heyne’s writings, “Are Economists Basically Immoral?” and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion (Geoffrey Brennan and A.M.C. Waterman, eds.) (original emphasis; footnote deleted):

As David Colander has reminded those who like to use the positive-normative distinction, the original classification made by John Neville Keynes and quoted by Milton Friedman in his influential 1953 essay on “The Methodology of Positive Economics” was a three-part one: positive economics, normative economics, and the art of economics. Policy differences among economists are rarely rooted in disagreements either about positive economics or about normative ideals, but in uncertainty about what additional considerations need to be taken into account and how best to do so. Resolving these questions is the task of the art of economics, and art that is indispensable for anyone who wants to apply economics to real-world issues.