There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.

The principal mechanism for convergence at the international as well as the domestic level is the diffusion of knowledge.

Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read, and for me, it was not very influential.

Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interests of the least well-off.

The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.

I don't think there is any serious evidence that we need to be paying people more than 100 times the average wage in order to get high-performing managers.

At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution.