Thomas J. Sargent on Advising a Hedge Fund

What I’m interested in—if you’re alive, you’re interested in this—is how government policy can improve outcomes for inflation and employment, and the tradeoffs between efficiency and equality. I like the ability to use math to shed light on important social problems.

A friend who’s a great economist recommended that [Hutchin Hill founder] Neil Chriss and I meet. We first met for lunch in September, before the Nobel decision. I’m still in a state of shock and disbelief over the Nobel. I haven’t absorbed it yet. Neil wanted to deepen his knowledge of macroeconomic theory. I liked him right away. Neil speaks the same language I do. To an outsider, it might sound like code. He referred to an analysis of inflation that he’d read, not knowing it was from a paper that I had written 30 years ago. I had a very good time.