"In candid interviews, these great economists prove to be fabulous story tellers of their lives and times.  Unendingly gripping for insiders, this book should also help non-specialists understand how economists think."


Professor Julio Rotemberg
Harvard University Business School
Boston
Editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics
jrotemberg@hbs.edu

"Economics has made swift progress in the past few decades and its role in policy-making has radically increased. The interviews of many of the most prominent researchers and policy-makers offer a unique insider view of these developments. This book is fascinating reading to anyone interested in contemporary economics and its role in modern societies."

"Economics used to be called the 'dismal science'.  It will be impossible for anybody to  hold that view anymore after reading these interviews. This is science with flesh and blood, and a lot of fascinating stories that you will find nowhere else."

Dr. Jean-Pascal Bénassy
Paris-Jourdan Sciences Économiques (PSE) and Centre pour la Recherche Economique et ses Applications (CEPREMAP)
Paris, France
benassy@pse.ens.fr

"This book provides a rare and intriguing view of the personal and professional lives of leading economists, and the circumstances that facilitated their creative breathroughs. It is like A Beautiful Mind, scaled by a factor of 16 [the number of interviews in the book]."

"Histories of economic analysis abound, but if you want an insider view of how economics has been developing in the last decades, this is the (only) book for you."

"These candid interviews are packed with insights rivaling those of the classic contributions of the economists interviewed.  But the two are of course complements, not substitutes.  Here we see the HUMAN side of path-breaking research, the personalities and pitfalls, the DRAMA behind the science."


Professor Francis X. Diebold
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
fdiebold@sas.upenn.edu

"Reading this book is an easy and exciting way to learn about the major developments in economics during the last decades:  a delightful view at the production process of scientific progress."


Helmut Lütkepohl
European University Institute
Florence, Italy
Helmut.Luetkepohl@IUE.it
and
Humboldt University
Berlin, Germany

"This book is a fascinating source of insights into the personalities of leading economists - an intellectuals' People Magazine - complete with !%$!!'s and pictures."

"Thanks very much for bringing this exciting book to my attention.  I think every economist is going to want to read it!  It is an inspired idea."

 "How to enter into  advanced knowledge when your are an outsider ?  Listen to the people who produced it. They will share with you their doubts, their tâtonnement, their intellectual battles, and will thus provide you with a port of entry into living science.  This approach is particularly effective in economics, a field in which facts and ideas interact every day.  Reading the interviews of eminent economists is both the best-guided and the most pleasant walk into the frontiers of economic knowledge."


Professor Roger Guesnerie
Collège de France
Paris, France
roger.guesnerie@college-de-france.fr

"A wonderful collection of personal and professional insights by Economic's leading intellectual's.  Each one is worth reading."


Professor Mark Watson
Princeton University
mwatson@Princeton.edu   

"Fascinating reflections on the history of economic thoughts through the lens of some of its founders.  A tour de force."

Professor Oded Galor
Brown University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Editor of the Journal of Economic Growth
Oded_Galor@brown.edu

"This collection of interviews with major contributors to modern economics makes for fascinating reading.  It ranges from the very concrete, as in the comments of Paul Volcker on Arthur Burns, his predecessor as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, and extends to the very abstract, as in the comments of Robert Aumann (now a Nobel Laureate) on applications of the theory of games in life and religion (the after life).  The Foreword by Paul Samuelson (the first American Laureate) provides a brief, but broad ranging and subtle response to the critique by history of thought economist, Roy Weintraub, that is also in this volume.  I side with Samuelson but others may differ."

Professor William W. Cooper
University of Texas at Austin
Graduate School of Business
cooperw@mail.utexas.edu 

‘‘They curse. They dish on their colleagues. They give the inside scoop.  Insights from the world’s top economists are revealed in an upcoming book, Inside the Economist’s Mind: The History of Modern Economic Thought, as Explained by Those Who Produced it. 

Here’s a preview:  Friedman, who won the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics, offered this regarding the ‘Great Inflation’ in the 1970s: 

‘I had a session with Nixon sometime in 1970, I think it was 1970, might have been 1971, in which he wanted me to urge (Fed Chairman) Arthur (Burns) to increase the money supply more rapidly (laughter) and I said to the president, "Do you really want to do that? The only effect of that will be to leave you with a larger inflation if you do get re-elected."  And he said, "Well, we’ll worry about that after we get re-elected."

Typical. So there’s no doubt what Nixon’s pleasure was.’”

Lawrence Journal World
May 10, 2006

"Interviews that illuminate the thinking of the great economists who have shaped our time."

"Autobiography is fascinating.  Interviews are often better, as they compress and highlight the life events that led to the emergence and evolution of ideas.  These remarkably candid interviews are exemplars of that fact.  If you want to know about the origins of much modern economic thinking, this superb collection is mandatory reading."