INSIDE THE
ECONOMIST’S MIND
Conversations with Eminent Economists
Edited by
Paul A. Samuelson and William A. Barnett

Contents
About the Editors vii
Coeditor’s Foreword: Reflections on How Biographies of
Individual Scholars Can Relate to a Science’s Biography
Paul A. Samuelson viii
Coeditor’s Preface: An Overview of the Objectives and
Contents of the Volume
William A. Barnett xi
History of Thought Introduction: Economists Talking with
Economists, An Historian’s Perspective
E. Roy Weintraub 1
The Interviews
1   An Interview with Wassily Leontief 15
Interviewed by Duncan K. Foley
2   An Interview with David Cass 32
Interviewed by Stephen E. Spear and Randall Wright
3   An Interview with Robert E. Lucas, Jr. 57
Interviewed by Bennett T. McCallum
4   An Interview with János Kornai 67
Interviewed by Olivier Blanchard
5   An Interview with Franco Modigliani 85
Interviewed by William A. Barnett and Robert Solow
6   An Interview with Milton Friedman 110
Interviewed by John B. Taylor
v7   An Interview with Paul A. Samuelson 143
Interviewed by William A. Barnett
8   An Interview with Paul A. Volcker 165
Interviewed by Perry Mehrling
9   An Interview with Martin Feldstein 192
Interviewed by James M. Poterba
10   An Interview with Christopher A. Sims 209
Interviewed by Lars Peter Hansen
11   An Interview with Robert J. Shiller 228
Interviewed by John Y. Campbell
12   An Interview with Stanley Fischer 261
Interviewed by Olivier Blanchard
13   An Interview with Jacques Drèze 278
Interviewed by Pierre Dehez and Omar Licandro
14   An Interview with Thomas J. Sargent 307
Interviewed by George W. Evans and Seppo Honkapohja
15   An Interview with Robert Aumann 327
Interviewed by Sergiu Hart
16   Conversations with James Tobin and Robert J. Shiller
on the “Yale Tradition” in Macroeconomics 392
Conducted by David Colander
vi   ContentsAbout the Editors
William  A.  Barnett  is  Oswald  Distinguished  Professor  of  Macroeco-
nomics  at  the  University  of  Kansas.  He  was  previously  Research  Eco-
nomist  at  the  Board  of  Governors  of  the  Federal  Reserve  System  in
Washington, DC; Stuart Centennial Professor of Economics at the Uni-
versity  of  Texas  at  Austin;  and  Professor  of  Economics  at  Washington
University in St. Louis. William Barnett has been a leading researcher in
macroeconomics  and  econometrics.  He  is  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the
study of chaos and nonlinearity in socioeconomic contexts, as well as a
major figure in the study of the aggregation problem, which lies at the
heart of how individual and aggregate data are related. He is Editor of
the Elsevier monograph series International Symposia in Economic Theory
and  Econometrics,  and  Editor  of  the  journal  Macroeconomic  Dynamics,
published  by  Cambridge  University  Press.  He  received  his  BS  degree
from MIT, his MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, and
his MA and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He has published
17 books (as either author or editor) and over 130 articles in professional
journals.
Paul  A.  Samuelson  was  the  first  American  to  win  the  Nobel  Prize  in
Economics.  He  is  Professor  Emeritus  of  Economics  and  Institute  Pro-
fessor  at  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology;  Institute  Professor
is the highest rank awarded by MIT. His landmark 1947 book, Founda-
tions of Economic Analysis, based upon his Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard
University,  established  him  as  “the  economists’  economist”  by  raising
the standards of the entire profession. Paul Samuelson’s classic textbook,
Economics,  first  published  in  1948,  is  among  the  most  successful  text-
books ever published in the field. The book’s 16 editions have sold over
four  million  copies  and  have  been  translated  into  41  languages.  He
received his BA degree from the University of Chicago and his MA and
Ph.D. from Harvard University. As one of the profession’s most produc-
tive  scholars  for  over  a  half-century,  he  remains  an  intellectual  force  of
towering stature.