A single currency entails a fixed interest rate, which means countries can't manage their own currency to suit their own needs. You need a variety of institutions to help nations for which the policies aren't well suited. Europe introduced the euro without providing those structures.

In the end, the politics of the euro zone weren't strong enough to create a fully integrated fiscal union with a common banking system, etc.

The euro zone was driven by the neoliberal view that markets are always efficient. That in itself is political. There was no pressing economic need that the euro was required to solve, but leaders believed that it would foster growth.

We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.

The bank bailout should have been more focused on helping small and medium sized banks, on helping homeowners. I think the trade agreements are a disaster.

Society can't function without shared prosperity.

I don't think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.

For the president of the United States, reputation does matter. The reputation of the United States does matter. We are dealing with countries all over the world. They want to know if your word is good. Trump's word is not good.

I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced.

As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.

Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation.

My research in this period centered around growth, technical change, and income distribution, both how growth affected the distribution of income and how the distribution of income affected growth.

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.

But while I loved all of these courses, there was an irresistible attraction of economics.

Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education.

I went to Amherst because my brother had gone there before me, and he went there because his guidance counselor thought that we would do better there than at a large university like Harvard.

I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.

There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

America under Trump has gone from being a world leader to an object of derision.

International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief.

The IP standards advanced countries favour typically are designed not to maximise innovation and scientific progress, but to maximise the profits of big pharmaceutical companies and others able to sway trade negotiations.

Donald Trump's astonishing victory in the U.S. presidential election has made one thing abundantly clear: too many Americans - particularly white male Americans - feel left behind.

There is something about the mindset of a scientist that is different - an awareness of uncertainty, modeling, proof.