In his new book Trillion Dollar Economists, Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution argues that the economics profession has “created trillions of dollars of income and wealth for the United States and the rest of the world.” That sounds like a nice contribution for a relatively small profession, especially if we do some simple arithmetic.
在布鲁金斯研究所（Brookings Institution）的罗伯特·利坦（Robert Litan）在其新著《万亿美元经济学家》（Trillion Dollar Economists）中指出，经济学界“为美国和世界其他地区创造了数万亿美元收入和财富。”听起来，这个相对规模较小的职业做出了相当漂亮的贡献，特别是如果我们做一些简单计算的话。比如，美国经济学会（American Economic Association，现在由我出任当选主席）只有20,000会员；如果他们创造了（比如）2万亿美元收入和财富，那么相当于每位经济学家创造了1亿美元。