Customers often value a good more when its price goes up. One reason may be its signaling value. An expensive handcrafted mechanical watch may tell time no more accurately than a cheap quartz model; but, because few people can afford one, buying it signals that the owner is rich.

The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves have a chance to be winners.

If developed countries' citizens want to feel slightly better about their economies' slow growth and high unemployment, they should contemplate how much worse matters could be without the institutions that they have.

Raghuram Rajan Quotes