Less Creative, More Useful

Greg Mankiw:

I wonder how different the economics profession would be if economists were expected to do a year of service outside of academia or, at the very least, if university hiring committees rewarded a year of real-world experience as the equivalent of, say, a couple of academic publications. My conjecture is that the profession would be less creative but more useful.

I'm not sure if I would personally like to be required to do a year of service outside of academia. But it would certainly be a good thing if economics and the professional work of economists as researchers and teachers were more useful.