I am not really inclined to think there is any very effective regulation of the derivative securities markets that would be useful. People who go into it essentially ought to know what risks they're taking and I don't see any useful regulation.

My graduate study was interrupted, like that of many others, by World War II.

My research, even before 1972, moved in directions beyond those cited for the Nobel Memorial Prize. Most of it, in one way or another, deals with information as an economic variable, both as to its production and as to its use.

There are all sorts of institutions in the economic world which depart from the simple price/market model which I worked on in an earlier incarnation and which has been sort of the mainstream of economic theories since Adam Smith and David Ricardo. There are all sorts of contractual relations between firms and individuals which do not conform to the simple price theory - profit-sharing schemes and so forth - and the explanation for these suddenly became clear. We now understand why these emerged and that they are based on differences in information in the economy.

There's only one problem that bothers me. And that's something my theorem [ of Impossibility] really doesn't cover. In my theorem I was assuming people vote sincerely. The trouble with methods where you have three or four classes, I think if people vote sincerely they may well be very satisfactory. The problem is the incentive to misrepresent your vote may be high.

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.

Unsolved problems, that's one of the great signs of progress in my opinion.