I am very grateful to the entire Princeton University Press team for its superb work during the process leading to the publication of this book. Bilingual Sarah Caro, its publisher for Social Sciences for Europe, supervised the translation process with talent, good humor, and patience. Peter Dougherty, its director, has been enthusiastic about the book since day 1 and has brought precious advice; I was delighted to work with him once again. The translation team was composed of Steven Rendall, who had the hard task of translating a long book in a short time, and of Professor Diane Coyle and Tim Phillips, who did a great job at making sure that the economics was sound and adapted to an international audience. The reader will, I think, take notice of the resulting high quality of the translation. Finally, let me thank Jon Wainwright from T&T Productions Ltd and Julie Shawvan for their careful work typesetting and indexing the book.
The French version had benefited from helpful comments from Philippe Aghion, Roland Bénabou, Olivier Blanchard, Christophe Bisière, Paul Champsaur, Frédéric Cherbonnier, Mathias Dewatripont, Augustin Landier, Alain Quinet, Patrick Rey, Paul Seabright, Nathalie Tirole, Philippe Trainar, and Étienne Wasmer, who of course cannot be held responsible for any errors and omissions.
Like any book, Economics for the Common Good heavily borrows from the author’s intellectual environment, primarily Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST). This exciting environment is a tribute to its founder Jean-Jacques Laffont, the epitome of the economist serving the common good. I also have much benefited from MIT’s extraordinary economics department, from which I graduated, where I taught and which I still regularly visit; and from insights from many colleagues in various great research environments. The intellectual influence of my coauthors is also omnipresent in the book. I have been very fortunate to interact with and benefit from the talent and generosity of such wonderful teachers, colleagues, and students.
Finally, I thank all those who have encouraged me to write this book. While I have long taken part in policymaking, conversing with private and public decision-makers, as yet I had never engaged with the wider public. After receiving the Nobel Prize I was regularly asked by people I met in the street or as I gave talks to explain to a broader audience the nature of economic research and what it contributes to our well-being. They inquired about whether economists are useful, whether economics is a science, whether the key challenges we face can be solved. They made me aware of my responsibility to get out of my laboratory, describe my daily activity, and explain the logic and insights of economics—not to act as a commentator on each and every topic, but simply to share with the public my passion for the discipline and to explain how scientific knowledge can guide economic policies and help us understand the world we (will) live in.