Barbara Bergmann is responding to the following questions:

What was your motivation to become an economist and who were your academic teachers?

Almost ten years ago you published an article titled Abolish the Nobel prize for economics – how fair is the Nobel? What were your main points of critique and are they still valid today? What do you think about the latest Nobel laureate Paul Krugman?

Do you see a gender aspect in this Nobel-Prize-Business?

You served as President of the International Association for Feminist Economics. What is your understanding of feminist economics and how do you assess its status quo and perspectives?

Do you think that equal opportunities for women in the socio-economic sphere are realized at the beginning of the 21st century? And if not, where do you still see deficits? What are the causes and which remedies would you suggest?

You have also done some work on the limits of growth. Recently a debate among economics has come up whether environmental problems are really as big as often maintained. And whether it would be more urgent and efficient to invest the resources devoted to improve the environment in other areas, for example in the reduction of global poverty. How pressing are the ecological challenges we are facing in your opinion and what can economists contribute to cope with these challenges?

How can ecologically and socially sustainable growth be concretized and how can it be achieved?

Do you think this could be achieved by developing alternative indicators, not orienting on just GDP but maybe include environmental aspects into GDP or discard the concept of GDP altogether? There has been a debate about happiness for example.

Do you think it is always the problem that people would have to give up something? It would be possible, for example, to take shorter showers to reduce the waste of resources.

What do you think about the current state of European welfare states, the so-called European Social Model, and is this model, which differs from the US-American one in many respects, fit for the future?