The rate of growth of the relevant population is much greater than the rate of growth in funds, though funds have gone up very nicely. But we have been producing students at a rapid rate; they're competing for funds and therefore they're more frustrated. I think there's a certain sense of weariness in the intellectual realm, it's not in any way peculiar to economics, it's a general proposition.

The general uncertainty about the prospects of medical treatment is socially handled by rigid entry requirements. These are designed to reduce the uncertainty in the mind of the consumer as to the quality insofar as this is possible. I think this explanation, which is perhaps the naive one, is much more tenable than any idea of a monopoly seeking to increase incomes.

The trouble is that the risks that are being hedged very well by new financial securities are financial risks. And it appears to me that the real things you want to hedge are real risks, for example, risks in innovation. The fact is that you'd like companies to be able to take bigger chances. Presumably one obstacle to successful R&D, particularly when the costs are large, are the risks involved.

Usefulness depends on tractability.

The MD is well aware that the forecasts are no good but he needs them for planning purposes.

When you look at any experimental work not directly related to economics, but trying to test rational behavior in other ways, experiments have conspicuously failed to show rational behavior. Macro evidence certainly suggests deviations from rationality, but I don't want to say the rationality hypothesis is completely wrong. If you have any introspective idea or experimental idea about people's behavior, it seems to be incompatible with the really full scale rational expectations.

The Germans, for example, have some kind of compromise between single-member and broader districts. In Israel, you have nothing, you have only a national election. You have no local districts at all. And that's because of the idea that in addition to other ideological differences, locality matters. The question is does the congressman represent his district and the interests of his district? And as I said there's quite a variety of systems the democratic world. The implications need to be examined.