My mother died of lung cancer last year. I felt helpless. As an economist, I thought, What can I do?

While neurological studies have tried to identify components responsible for fear and greed, the impact on finance is less clear.

The risks facing hedge funds are non-linear and more complex than those facing traditional asset classessuch risks are currently not widely appreciated or well-understood

Economists suffer from a deep psychological disorder that I call 'physics envy'. We wish that 99 percent of economic behavior could be captured by three simple laws of nature. In fact, economists have 99 laws that capture 3 percent of behavior. Economics is a uniquely human endeavor.

The United States has the most sophisticated financial markets in the world, which does not leave much room to maneuver. But it also offers investors the greatest access to information and the ability to execute trades quickly and efficiently. So it is a mixed bag of opportunity.

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism.

Labor is getting more expensive and technology is getting cheaper.