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All Quotes by author - Eric Maskin
" A contingent bailout policy - implicit or explicit - must be coupled with some regulation of what banks can and cannot do. For example, a ban on lending to uncreditworthy customers might well make sense. "
Example
Well
Sense
" A properly designed tax system can strike a balance between helping the poor and, at the same time, giving people the incentive to work. "
Tax
Giving
Balance
" At Tenafly High, I was lucky to have some dedicated teachers; I'm especially indebted to my calculus instructor, Francis Piersa, who opened my eyes to the striking beauty of mathematics. "
Eyes
Who
Teachers
" Because mechanism designers do not generally know which outcomes are optimal in advance, they have to proceed more indirectly than simply prescribing outcomes by fiat; in particular, the mechanisms designed must generate the information needed as they are executed. "
Because
Information
Know
" Devising a mechanism is a lot like solving a puzzle - and gives you the same kind of kick. "
Puzzle
You
Same
" Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right. "
Right
Always
Good
" How do we ensure in the case of public goods that they are provided at all, and that they are provided at the right level, taking into account citizens' preferences? "
How
Public
Right
" I choose questions to work on according to how much they excite me. "
Work
Me
Much
" I don't want to make public statements about issues that I have not studied in detail. "
Issues
Public
Make
" I entered economics because of a course I took on 'information economics,' which I found fascinating. "
Found
Economics
Information
" If banks anticipate government will come to the rescue should the credit market go badly awry, they may make loans that would otherwise be imprudent, e.g. subprime loans with little prospect of repayment. "
Rescue
Will
Go
" If budget planning requires gathering information from people who may not always have the incentive to disclose that information, then the principles of mechanism design can definitely be of use in such planning. "
People
Design
Information
" If I buy a car, I use the car, you don't, and the market for cars works pretty well. But there are many other sorts of goods, often very important goods, which are not provided well through the market. Often, these go under the heading of public goods. "
Pretty
Car
Go
" If I'm a bank, and I'm making risky loans, I have an incentive, if I can, to make those loans using other people's money: in other words, to make highly leveraged loans. "
I Can
Other
People
" I have a strong attachment to Harvard. "
Attachment
Harvard
Strong
" I like to work on a number of things simultaneously. If you're working on a variety of projects and if you get stuck on one of them, you can move to another without grinding your gears indefinitely. "
You
Work
Working
" I'm not a housing market expert, and I don't want to pretend to be one. "
Want
Pretend
Market
" In an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them. "
Better
Try
Society
" In various countries around the world, assets that had previously been in the hands of governments were sold off to the private sector in the hope that this would lead to a more efficient allocation, that these assets would be put to better use. "
Hope
Lead
Better
" I probably learned most at MIT by teaching and working with Peter Diamond, who acted like a big brother to me during my time in the department. "
Working
Big Brother
Time
" I think I have met nearly all the Laureates in Economics. Among the few I haven't met, I suppose I'd most like to meet Ronald Coase because of his legendary power to persuade his colleagues of the validity of the Coase Theorem. "
Think
Colleagues
Economics
" It wasn't that Harvard was deliberately trying to overwork me, but I think I had a tendency to take on more things out of enthusiasm than were good for me. "
Out
Think
Trying
" I was born in New York City but grew up across the Hudson River in Alpine, New Jersey. "
Born
City
New
" Leo Hurwicz is the father of mechanism design theory and has inspired much of my work, and Roger Myerson is an old friend and collaborator and a tremendous economist. "
Leo
Friend
Father
" Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand. "
Helping Hand
Work
Best
" Markets work well with goods that economists call private goods. "
Economists
Work
Well
" Most policy makers embrace a religious-like belief that the market can and should solve every problem. "
Policy
Market
Problem
" Much theoretical work, of course, focuses on existing economic institutions. The theorist wants to explain or forecast the economic or social outcomes that these institutions generate. "
Explain
Much
Work
" Of course, MIT was notable not just for its faculty but also for its students. And, facing such extremely bright kids as a rookie teacher was something like being thrown to the wolves. "
Bright
Students
Teacher
" Perhaps one day earthquakes, hurricanes and financial crashes will all be predictable. But we don't have to wait until then for seismology, meteorology and economics to become sciences; they already are. "
Financial
Day
Economics
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