AN ECONOMIST MEASURES THE USE OF “AND”. Economists like to measure things. When Paul Romer thought that his research staff at the World Bank was using “and” too much, he told the staff: “To drive home the importance of focus, I’ve told the authors that I will not clear the final [world development] report if the frequency of ‘and’ exceeds 2.6%.” He arrived at the 2.6% figure by having analyses done of the current frequency of “and” in scholarly writing (which was 2.6%). He also had an analysis made of World Bank reports from previous decades, and that also arrived at approximately a 2.6% figure for the usage of “and”.
Romer then informed his staff that the usage of “and” in World Bank reports had grown to about 7%.