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The Nobel Prize in Economics is an incredible recognition for the work that my students, colleagues and I have done over the years. We all worked hard, but we were also lucky that the financial applications were so important.

When, over fifty years ago, I first became interested in economics - as a discipline that provided the key to social structure and social problems - it never crossed my mind that one day I might be the honored recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize.

I decided to go to the London School of Economics to write my thesis for MIT, under James Meade, Nobelist with Bertil Ohlin in 1977.

I think it is true to say that I am not the first Nobel Prize winner in economics to have little formal training in economics.

With the variety of fields within economics, broadly conceived and the increasing specialization of scholarly world, the award of a Nobel Memorial Prize honors not only the individual scholar but, implicitly, also a special field or a distinctive method.

Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

It is a wonderful and unexpected honor to receive the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Receiving this prize with Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, whose work I have learned from and admired, makes it even more gratifying.

Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at the end of the day, we don't know very much in economics.

I think that it's more important for an economist to be wise and sophisticated in scientific method than it is for a physicist because with controlled laboratory experiments possible, they practically guide you; you couldn't go astray. Whereas in economics, by dogma and misunderstanding, you can go very sadly astray.

I think I have met nearly all the Laureates in Economics. Among the few I haven't met, I suppose I'd most like to meet Ronald Coase because of his legendary power to persuade his colleagues of the validity of the Coase Theorem.