Thank you to the Society for the honor of addressing your annual meeting. In doing a little research on the SPE's history, I noted that one goal cited by the business economists who founded this group was creating a forum to discuss the divergence between real-world challenges and economic theory. That task is pressing when business profits, losses, and the jobs of employees are on the line, and the stakes are also high for economic policymakers, who face those very challenges today. Economies are confoundingly difficult to understand because, in a sense, they are the largest and most complex things ever created by ... (full story)