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I gravitated to economics because I'm interested in how people coordinate and collaborate with each other. Economics studies all the ways people get along with each other.

My job was to teach the whole corpus of economic theory, but there were two subjects in which I was especially interested, namely, the economics of mass unemployment and international economics.

Economics is a strange science. Our subject deals with some of the most important as well as mundane issues that impinge on the human condition.

I think economics - and this is what I've tried to impart - has a tremendous amount of human interest in it.

I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on free-market economics.

I began my career as an economics professor but became frustrated because the economic theories I taught in the classroom didn't have any meaning in the lives of poor people I saw all around me. I decided to turn away from the textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence.

In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching.

I really am enjoying my economics class, but I think my favorite course has to be history.

In Oxford before the war, I had, with this interest in mind, written a short textbook entitled, An Introduction to Economic Analysis and Policy. It was now my intention to rewrite this work.