re:1) Possibly so for some subjects in microeconomics. And, I'm sure there are things that would be called "dark patterns" here that are determined by economist

re:1) Possibly so for some subjects in microeconomics. And, I'm sure there are things that would be called "dark patterns" here that are determined by economists helping corporations determine their pricing. With respect to macroeconomics, the insights suggest choices in public policy that advance a given goal. They could be dishonest about their conclusions and try to benefit a specific group than the one they claim will benefit, but even then they still require the public policy to be implemented, which is different than being able to trade on things in secret. re:3) Two categories outside of academia are economists working at Federal Reserve banks and the small economics groups at other banks and a few of the largest corporations. Much of the work at the Federal Reserve banks goes to waste, because of the political stakes around the Fed and attempts to co-opt its influence. Almost everyone is muzzled from saying anything publicly, because it will be intentionally misunderstood, and become part of a political excuse to limit the Fed system's independence. It is a loss for general economic understanding, but probably has prevented some economic interference by crackpots in Congress. At the banks there are a few roles. Sometimes in a period of uncertainty their job is to supply a high level picture and a few operating theories to work with when deciding how to react through the trading day. Sometimes the job is to provide a plausible narrative for justifying why they are trading in a market that is not sustainable over the long term, but is still making the bank money that year. The weakness behind 2008 were not an unknown secret even if no one knew exactly how and when the crisis would occur. And yet, the people at the bank using your research wouldn't find your analysis useful if your advice was to just stay out of the market. Furthermore, there are plenty of people on Wall Street who are brilliant and great at their finance jobs, but have no understanding of the material in a typical intermediate macroeconomics course, because it simply is not relevant to their daily performance.