Sangmin Oh
A paper has one sentence to earn your attention. These are the ones that earned it.
Harold Hotelling
The Economic Journal · 1929
"After the work of the late Professor F. Y. Edgeworth one may doubt that anything further can be said on the theory of competition among a small number of entrepreneurs." The paper opens by conceding the field looks closed, then quietly pries it open. The classic and-yet pivot, executed in a single breath.
Surfaced by Marco Haan
Joseph J. Spengler
Journal of Political Economy · 1950
"This man went down to his house justified. — Luke 18:14." A scripture epigraph as the gateway to an antitrust note on vertical integration. Rare now, and full of character then.
Surfaced by W. Benedikt Schmal
Robert M. Solow
Quarterly Journal of Economics · 1956
"All theory depends on assumptions which are not quite true. That is what makes it theory." A one-line philosophy of modeling, stated before the model. It defends abstraction by embracing it.
Surfaced by the original
Dennis J. Snower
Journal of Political Economy · 1982
"Although human beings have endured the recurring ravages of vampires for centuries, scarcely any attempts have been made to analyze the macroeconomic implications of this problem." The deadpan gap-in-the- literature move, deployed on an absurd subject. The joke is the form, played completely straight.
Surfaced by Chris Auld
Russell Cooper & Andrew John
Quarterly Journal of Economics · 1988
"There are three types of papers in the macroeconomic literature on unemployment theory." A dry, self-locating taxonomy. It sorts the whole field into three boxes, then quietly claims the third for itself.
Surfaced by @Ze0mniKeynes1an