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" 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? "

Eric Maskin

How

Public

Right

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Eric Maskin

Work

Much

" 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. "

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" Devising a mechanism is a lot like solving a puzzle - and gives you the same kind of kick. "

" 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. "

" I entered economics because of a course I took on 'information economics,' which I found fascinating. "

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" I'm not a housing market expert, and I don't want to pretend to be one. "

" I don't want to make public statements about issues that I have not studied in detail. "

" There are some things that we value as a public good that the markets can't deliver, like clean air. "

Eric Maskin

Good

Clean

" The Nobel Prize is not very important for the winners - they are usually pretty successful people already. But it is valuable as a way of drawing the public's attention to important work in economics. "

" Prediction is certainly a valuable goal in science, but not the only one. Explanation is also important, and there are plenty of sciences that do a lot of explaining and not much predicting. "

" 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. "

" Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand. "

" The market doesn't work very well when it comes to public goods. "

" In an industry with highly sequential innovation, it may be better for society to scrap patents altogether than try to tighten them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There is universal consensus among experts that the earth's atmosphere is heating up - and that we are responsible for it by putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We also know that the consequences of global warming are catastrophic. But how do we make sure that all countries reduce greenhouse gases? "

" 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. "

Eric Maskin

Pretty

Car

" 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. "

" 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. "

Eric Maskin

Rescue

Will

" Through meteorology, we know essentially how hurricanes form, even though we can't say where the next storm will arise. "

Eric Maskin

Say

Storm