LONDON, Feb. 10 -- The economic reform agenda outlined by the Chinese government late last year is heading in the right direction, said Nobel Prize in Economics winner Eric Maskin on Saturday.

The government has shown resolve to reduce social inequality, one of the risks facing China, Maskin told Xinhua on the sidelines of the China Development Forum at the London School of Economics.

Proposing his solution to the problem, he said, "One thing could be done there is to erect a stronger safety net and to provide better basic medical care to people at the bottom."

But the most important thing, according to the laureate, is to give the less wealthy and less skilled people the same opportunity to better education and training.

During his keynote speech at the forum, Maskin highlighted the importance of reducing inequality in poor countries, noting that the global market has not reduced income inequality despite its promise to bring prosperity to the poorer countries.

Maskin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2007, jointly with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson, for having laid the foundation of mechanism design theory, a specialized form of game theory that attempts to maximize gains for all parties within markets.