Like medicine, economics has become highly compartmentalized – macroeconomists typically do not pay attention to what financial economists or real-estate economists study, and vice versa. Yet, to see the crisis coming would have required someone who knew about each of these areas – just as it takes a good general practitioner to recognize an exotic disease.
跟医学一样，经济学也被划分成许多不同的门类——宏观经济学家一般不会关注金融经济学家或地产经济学家究竟在干什么，反之亦然。但预测危机却需要对各个经济学领域都有所涉猎的人——正如我们需要一个优秀的全科医师去辨认某种外来病一样。由于该学科只崇尚细致，证据充分但也必然有些狭窄的研究，因此也只有少数的经济学家愿意在各细分领域之间进行跨界研究。