Eric Maskin Work Quotations

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.

I choose questions to work on according to how much they excite me.

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

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.

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

Markets work well with goods that economists call private goods.

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

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.

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.