Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.

The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.

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

The decision-making process in the White House does not let most issues get up to the President. The Council thought opening up global markets to derivatives that would destabilize other countries wasn't likely to create a lot of jobs in the U.S. and might adversely affect U.S. interests by causing global economic instability.

The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.

In the midst of the East Asian crisis, there were choices. One choice would have been to encourage countries to implement a bankruptcy law that could have threatened the interests of the lenders. Workers' rights should be a central focus of development. But nowhere did issues of workers' rights, including the right to participate in the decisions which would affect their lives in so many ways, get raised.

What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.