Usamah Ahmed Uthman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Economics

osama@kfupm.edu.sa

Why Good Economists Are The rarest of Birds?

"The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel. The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard."

John Maynard Keynes

The Economic Journal

September 1924