MICHAEL KREMER RAISES SOME REASONABLE POINTS IN HIS response, but fails to address my main critique, which is that despite offering a development of the Clark extinction model, Kremer and Morcom’s analysis tells us little or nothing about the real world. Fair enough for an intellectual exercise, but the specific policy prescriptions of the article would only exacerbate the problem for endangered species worldwide. This kind of disconnect underscores the gap between the positive influence that economics could have on important issues such as the conservation of natural resources, and the abstractions that seem to have gripped the profession and torn it away from pragmatic analysis.