Last Wednesday as the press gathered at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm for a select briefing with this year’s Nobel laureates, the only question that dominated the 30-minutes session was what next for the world economy with Donald Trump as president of the US and a Brexit round the corner. In an exclusive interview toin Stockholm,and, the 2016 Nobel winners for Economics, shared their concerns about Trump’s economic policies, rise of populist politics around the world and if there could have been a better way to deal with corruption besides delegitimising high-value currency notes. Edited excerpts:Yes, I am very worried and I have expressed this view that in the western world there has been a fairly significant attack and questioning of representative governance. As many elements that are fundamental to our democracy, like you are innocent until proven guilty and other principles, are going out of the window.Social media can attack you on some issues, especially if you are a politician, and you are gone.There can never be any hearing. And then they (politicians) demand constantly to be inspected with regards to what they are doing. And they have to make policies in a transparent environment and that means they are pandering to the public and seeking simplistic messages; in that sense Trump was very skilled. And there are elites in the West who did not read how frustrated people are and he tapped into that.Yes, there is much to be concerned about. I don’t see a coherence in his economic policy. What worries me is tearing up trade agreements and imposing tariffs. I don’t think that is the way forward. I am skeptical about policies that politicians like Trump are proposing.The people who voted for him may have not been looking at his economic policies carefully, what they were thinking is that this is the guy who somehow hears them. I don’t know how his policies are going to work for the working class white people, but if that doesn’t work then that is scary too, because we will see a new wave of anger.Yes , these are parallel features. The scandals on Wall Street and the financial crisis (of 2008) have broken the trust that people had in executive boards and how good a board is when it comes to supervising and keeping checks on executives. The simple idea that people who are elected in order to represent you and informs you about decisions always requires trust, and this trust is broken. So now people directly want to know something, so they have started electing people directly too. But they are not sufficiently involved, and the basis on which these decisions are made are much thinner, less informed and more simplistic.The government and politicians certainly did not pick up the unrest against the establishment. People wanted change and Trump promised that. Now he did not go into detail how he is going to bring about those changes. So in the long run we will see the world returning to the non-populist method of running a country. I hope that happens.I think the financial system is somewhat on a stronger footing, but it is not out of the woods, so I am a little worried.An overwhelming majority of economists probably might think it is a good idea to take out big bills because a lot of illegal cash is in these bills. But one has to always ask, where do those criminals go and what are they going to use it for, and time and time again I feel that what they (the government) come up with is something that is worse. So I am not saying that it is not right, but I don’t think people have thought about it.They go somewhere, that’s for sure. So this is the same debate as prostitution: you decriminalise it and good thing is that it comes out in public (with some sort of protection for the workers and regulation in the industry. Similarly, if you want to curb black money, you need to make things legal, that results in accumulation of black money).But if you make it illegal the results are worse, like less protection for women; it is that kind of problem. And this is what economics does: finding a substitute for such problems.