The best teachers still taught in a Socratic style, asking questions, responding to the answers with still another question. And in all of our course… - Joseph E. Stiglitz

New technologies (reinforced by new trade rules) are enhancing the market power of incumbent, dominant firms, such as Microsoft, which are all from the developed world; for the first time, in a key global industry, there is a near-global monopolist.

An essential commitment, which virtually all observers have emphasized, is not to subsidize enterprises that are making losses. While the standard remedy for this is "privatization," it should be recognized that this is neither necessary nor sufficient for imposing hard budget constraints. Governments in many countries have subsidized private producers (e.g., of steel), and governments in some countries have imposed hard budget constraints on government enterprises.

Seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are.