Entrepreneurs may undertake bad projects because they unwittingly rely on defective or incomplete information to estimate the returns. Investors' concerns about such misjudgements are relatively low when the entrepreneurs' knowledge about their projects has been well calibrated. But if the...

This lecture interprets the great tectonic shifts in the global economy that I have witnessed since I began studying economics in the 1950s. There are three stories of gaining ground (``catching up") on the world's lead economy and one of losing ground. This experience can help us to get right...