I would include non-medical sex selection as one of those practices that I think is morally questionable and that can carry adverse social consequences.

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.

I think the reason we might hesitate to pay cash to students for doing well on tests or getting good grades or reading books is that we sense that the monetary payment is an extrinsic reward.

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

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

They say the state should not impose on its citizens a preferred way of life, but should leave them as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.

It's ultimately the purpose of education to cultivate the love of learning for its own sake.