The Three Trillion Dollar War

The Three Trillion Dollar War is a 2008 book by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, both of whom are American economists.

The book examines the full cost of the Iraq War, including many hidden costs.[1] The book also discusses the extent to which these costs will be imposed for many years to come, paying special attention to the enormous expenditures that will be required to care for very large numbers of wounded veterans. The authors conclude by illustrating the opportunity cost of the resources spent on waging the war.

The total cost of $3 trillion is consistent with numerous government studies. These include the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which estimated that the war will cost $3.5 trillion,[2] and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which has projected that the total cost will reach between $1.4 and $2.2 trillion.[3] The Stiglitz-Bilmes work builds on an earlier study by Yale economist William Nordhaus, who predicted in 2002 that the war could reach $2 trillion if it went badly.[4] Numerous economists, including James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas and Nobel Laureate Lawrence Klein have supported the methodology in the book. Economist Fred Foldvary also wrote a positive review of the book in Econ Journal Watch. He believes better knowledge of both the budgeted and implicit costs of the war as spelled out in the book will further a more coherent dialogue on present and future related policy matters.[5]

However, the main thesis of the book has been criticized by some academics, including economist and author John Lott, Richard Zerbe, Associate Dean at the University of Washington School of Public Affairs, and Texas A&M University finance professor Edgar Browing. These academics have disagreed with various of the methodologies used in reaching the $3 trillion figure, including attaching a financial figure to the loss of soldiers' lives, declaring the subsequent rise in global oil prices a direct result of the Iraq War, and their reliance on the controversial Lancet surveys to determine the number of Iraqi deaths caused by the war.

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