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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Eric Maskin

Think

Colleagues

Economics

" 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. "

" A properly designed tax system can strike a balance between helping the poor and, at the same time, giving people the incentive to work. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I have a strong attachment to Harvard. "

" 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. "

" Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right. "

" The theory of mechanism design can be thought of as the 'engineering' side of economic theory. "

" 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

" Specifically, in the software industry, progress is highly sequential: progress is typically made through a large number of small steps, each building on the previous ones. "

" 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. "

" The market is no god - it cannot solve every problem. "

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

" 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. "

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

Eric Maskin

Say

Storm

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" This may not be the most serious problem in the world, but it is a familiar one: How do you divide a piece of cake equally between two children and also make sure that each of them sees it as a fair division? "

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

Eric Maskin

Good

Clean

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Most policy makers embrace a religious-like belief that the market can and should solve every problem. "

" 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. "

" I was born in New York City but grew up across the Hudson River in Alpine, New Jersey. "