I'm a supporter of embryonic stem cell research. I do think there are very important moral and also religious questions at stake in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.

There is a tendency to think that if we engage too directly with moral questions in politics, that's a recipe for disagreement, and for that matter, a recipe for intolerance and coercion.

What intrigued me most was not the technology as such but the questions about the human goods, the fundamental human values and virtues that are raised by debates over biotechnology.

Today if you look at most economic textbooks, economics is not defined by subject matter. It's presented as a science of social choice that applies not only to material goods - not only to flat-screen televisions - but to every decision we make, whether it's to get married, or to stay married, whether to have children and how to educate those children, or how to look after our health.

Over the past three decades, markets and market thinking have been reaching into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. As a result, we've drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society.

If you go back to Adam Smith, you find the idea that markets and market forces operate as an invisible hand. This is the traditional laissez-faire market idea. But today, when economics is increasingly defined as the science of incentive, it becomes clear that the use of incentives involves quite active intervention, either by an economist or a policy maker, in using financial inducements to motivate behavior. In fact, so much though that we now almost take for granted that incentives are central to the subject of economics.

What I really want for my children is that they be loved and that they be happy and that they lead a good life.