Maybe academic economists don't find it interesting to 'simply' make money and find reward in our endeavours? Plenty of STEM folks could work on Wall Street as

Maybe academic economists don't find it interesting to 'simply' make money and find reward in our endeavours? Plenty of STEM folks could work on Wall Street as quants for way more money, but choose not to. Paul McCulley (an economist) made certain predictions while working at PIMCO (as did Paul Krugman), and then he left and Bill Gross (PIMCO founder) ignored what he said and made certain financial moves and lost a whole bunch of money: * https://www.businessinsider.com/this-was-the-bill-gross-blunder-that-led-to-his-downfall-2014-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/this-was-the-bill-gross-blun... * https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/paul-krugman-depression-denial-syndrome.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/opinion/paul-krugman-depr... Gross is way richer than McCulley (or Krugman), and yet the rich guys got it wrong and the poor(er) guys got it right. If only Gross had listened to the economists (that worked for him).