Trillion Dollar Economists

Preface

Many, and possibly most, authors have a love–hate relationship with what they do. Writing every day, or trying to, can be a painful experience. Some days you have it and the words flow, and other days, your head is in a fog and you struggle to write a single sentence or paragraph.

I have had numerous jobs throughout my career where writing was not my main function, but in each one of them, writing memos, briefs, and articles was one element of what I was hired to do. I also had the good fortune through most of my working life to be employed by organizations that either paid me to write books or encouraged me to do so. And, to be honest, I have that love–hate attitude toward writing that I just described.

But not for this book; I wrote it while I was 63, at or near the culmination of my career, and every day I spent working on it was a joy. Like the swimming I look forward to each day, I couldn’t wait to sit down for however long I was able to do it, and at least write a few paragraphs or, ideally, several pages.

It’s not my age that explains this, but the subject matter (or matters), to be more precise. I hope that as you read the book, you can tell that I love economics and I am grateful to have a career in which I have been able to meet and occasionally work with so many outstanding, brilliant individuals. This book is kind of an ode to all of them and to the subject in general.

I got the inspiration to write it from three basic sources. First, I felt after the financial ...