The AEA Convention and Tree Cutting

Before the advent of the smart phone, all economists attending the AEA convention would receive two free books. One book was the conference program and the other was the hotel directory listing where all of the economists were staying.  Each of these printed items was handed to each of the 10,000 economists attending the annual economics convention. If together, these two books contained 200 sheets of paper, then this 3 day convention needed 2 million sheets of paper!    But, click on this and you will see the future.  Now that all economists have a smart phone, the Conference App will soon mean that these physical copies of these books will no longer be distributed.  Ingenuity can substitute for scarce resources.