Microeconomics
Dan Ariely (in Predictably irrational) - When social norms collide with market norms, the social norms go away and the market norms stay.
Robert Benchley - Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing.
Chris Dillow re the Gneezy-Rustichini effect - Prices can crowd out social norms, and if the price is low enough, its deterrent effect will be weaker than the social norm it displaced.
Albert Einstein - Sometimes, one pays most for the thing one gets for nothing.
Pierre-Yves Geoffard - Le prix est avant tout un thermomètre : il ne crée pas la fièvre, il la révèle.
Amihai Glazer - [Microeconomic puzzles are due to] either taxes or fraud - or both. ("Glazer’s Law")
Andrew Lewis (2010) - If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.
Lewisham cemetery graffiti - The grass is always greener on the other man's grave.
Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman (in the movie Television Delivers People, 1973) - The product of Television, Commercial Television, is the Audience. Television delivers people to an advertiser. (...) You are the product of T.V."
Rory Sutherland - You get a buzz from a bargain and a thrill from an extravagance – you don’t get an endorphin rush from mid-market retail. (...) This leads to polarisation in markets, where you get to choose between opulent but stupidly expensive or cheap and annoyingly crap.