Trillion Dollar Economists: How Economists and Their Ideas have Transformed Business

Trillion Dollar Economists explores the prize-winning ideas that have shaped business decisions, business models, and government policies, expanding the popular idea of the economist's role from one of forecaster to one of innovator. Written by the former Director of Economic Research at Bloomberg Government, the Kauffman Foundation and the Brookings Institution, this book describes the ways in which economists have helped shape the world – in some cases, dramatically enough to be recognized with a Nobel Prize or Clark Medal. Detailed discussion of how economists think about the world and the pace of future innovation leads to an examination of the role, importance, and limits of the market, and economists' contributions to business and policy in the past, present, and future.

Few economists actually forecast the economy's performance. Instead, the bulk of the profession is concerned with how markets work, and how they can be made more efficient and productive to generate the things people want to buy for a better life. Full of interviews with leading economists and industry leaders, Trillion Dollar Economists showcases the innovations that have built modern business and policy. Readers will:

• Review the basics of economics and the innovation of economists, including market failures and the macro-micro distinction
• Discover the true power of economic ideas when used directly in business, as exemplified by Priceline and Google
• Learn how economists contributed to policy platforms in transportation, energy, telecommunication, and more
• Explore the future of economics in business applications, and the policy ideas, challenges, and implications

Economists have helped firms launch new businesses, established new ways of making money, and shaped government policy to create new opportunities and a new landscape on which businesses compete. Trillion Dollar Economists provides a comprehensive exploration of these contributions, and a detailed look at innovation to come.

About the Author

As an economist and attorney, Robert Litan has nearly four decades of experience in the worlds of the law, economic research and policy, economic consulting, and as an executive in the private, public, and government sectors. Through his extensive publications and many speeches and testimony, he is a widely recognized national expert in regulation, antitrust, and finance, among other economic policy subjects.

Litan has directed economic research at nationally prominent organizations: The Brookings Institution (where he also was a resident research scholar for nearly two decades); the Kauffman Foundation (the world’s leading foundation supporting entrepreneurship); and Bloomberg Government (the subsidiary of Bloomberg LP that provides analysis of federal government decisions that affect business).

Litan has served in several high-level federal government positions: as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, and as a consultant to the Department of Treasury on financial modernization and the effectiveness of the Community Reinvestment Act (coauthoring several reports on these subjects). In the early 1990s he served as a member of the Presidential–Congressional Commission on the Causes of the Savings and Loan Crisis. He began his career as a staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Litan currently is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and of counsel to Korein Tillery, a law firm specializing in complex commercial litigation based in St. Louis and Chicago. He also blogs regularly for the Wall Street Journal’s “Think Tank” page.

During his research career, Litan has authored or coauthored 27 books and edited another 14, and authored or coauthored more than 200 articles in professional and popular publications. His latest books include Better Capitalism, coauthored with Carl Schramm, published by Yale University Press in 2012, and Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism (coauthored with William Baumol and Carl Schramm), also published by Yale in 2007, which is used widely in college courses and has been translated into 10 languages.

Litan earned his BS in Economics at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; his JD at Yale Law School; and his M. Phil. and PhD in Economics at Yale University.