William Baumol, a highly respected economist and industry consultant, stated that an economist can use his or her ability to build theoretical models and apply them to any business problem, no matter how complex, break it down into essential components, and describe the relationship among the components, thereby facilitating a systematic search for an optimal solution. In his extensive experience as a consultant to both industry and government, he found that every problem that he worked on was helped in some way by"the method of reasoning involved in the derivation of some economic theorem.