Daily Inspiration Quote by Lawrence R. Klein

An economist admitting he paid for his own research ecosystem by selling predictions is the kind of candor that quietly redraws the boundary between ivory tower purity and market pragmatism. Lawrence R. Klein isn’t boasting about a side hustle; he’s telegraphing a mid-century reality: quantitative economics was still fighting for institutional oxygen, and “research support” often meant convincing someone, somewhere, that numbers could earn their keep.

The intent is practical and political at once. “Supplement” signals scarcity; Pennsylvania wasn’t underwriting econometrics at the level Klein thought necessary. So he creates an external revenue stream by turning academic technique into a product. That move reframes forecasts as proof-of-concept: if governments and firms will pay, the methodology must be doing something real. It’s also a subtle bid for legitimacy inside the academy, where abstract theory long held higher status than model-driven, data-heavy work.

The subtext is that forecasting is both service and salesmanship. By specifying “private and public sector buyers,” Klein highlights econometrics’ dual clientele: corporations seeking advantage and governments seeking manageability. Either way, he’s acknowledging that macro models don’t just describe the economy; they become part of how institutions decide, plan, and justify decisions. Forecasts aren’t neutral weather reports. They’re instruments that can stabilize expectations, rationalize policy, or provide cover when outcomes disappoint.

Context matters: early 1960s optimism in technocracy, expanding federal planning, new computing power, and Cold War-era faith in management-by-model. Klein’s line reads like a mission statement for modern applied economics: if the university won’t fully bankroll the future, sell the future until it can’t be ignored.