Economists Profit by Giving Things Away - Bloomberg View

"Economics is the most influential social science, and has been for a long time. Why is that? A decade-and-a-half ago, Stanford University economist Edward Lazear offered a famous answer:

Economics is not only a social science, it is a genuine science. Like the physical sciences, economics uses a methodology that produces refutable implications and tests these implications using solid statistical techniques.

Maybe so (there are those who differ!). I can think of at least one other reason for economists’ outsize influence, though. It’s that anyone can get their hands on economists’ research."