On the things that economists talk about while having lunch

The intention of this essay is to demonstrate the utility of economists and the range of their potential scientific contributions. We do this by considering an alternative history of the Pythagorean theorem, c2 = a2 + b2, for which the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos is given credit for discovering. We argue that, at worst, philosophers of science in the tradition of understanding mankind’s propensity to “truck, barter, and exchange” would have eventually discovered it. In the absence of another scholar providing the above theorem, chances are good that it would be studied as the “Solow theorem,” an equation which would have predicted the hypotenuse without residual.

That is from the paper "Could Bob Solow Have Replaced Pythagoras? An Alternate Universe Where Economists Solve the Problem of Right-Triangles" by Ross and Duncan. 

The authors say:

For the time and discussion from which this paper was designed the authors would like to express their appreciation to the institution of lunch, which is yet another idea economists would have invented had they been given the chance.

:) :)