(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ken Courtis is trying to remember what he did last week. Straight off a plane from Tokyo, he's sitting stiffly on the edge of a couch at the Regal Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Despite the nine-hour flight, Courtis is impeccably groomed. His navy-blue pinstriped suit looks as if it's just been pressed, and when he stretches, his gold and sapphire cuff links catch the light. Glancing at the Italianate furnishings of the hotel, Courtis reminds himself out loud that if today is Monday, he must be in Los Angeles. So last Monday, he recalls, he was in Sydney speaking to 400 or so CEOs about the economic prospects for Asia. Tuesday and Wednesday he was in Singapore to brief policymakers on the outlook for world commodity prices. Thursday, on to Bangkok to help Swiss cement giant Holderbank with its regional expansion plans. Friday he was in Seoul, to gauge Korea's economic recovery. Saturday, back to Tokyo (which is home, more or less) to lunch with China's Premier, Zhu Rhongi. And Sunday was a day in the office with his research team to prepare for the week ahead.

So goes the life of a globetrotting economist: part strategist, part number cruncher, part celebrity, and part sleuth.

Market forces are reshaping the world of economics. For a start, demand is strong. There are about 80,000 working economists in the U.S., double the number 20 years ago. About half are found in universities, and 15% in government, the traditional redoubts of the profession. What's most interesting is the remainder--call them the Postmodern Third. These are the folks who, like Courtis, are in the frontline of global business--and who have to prove their worth day in, day out. That means convincing firms and investors that economic data and analysis will help them to make money. By visiting clients, appearing on TV, and giving speeches, the Postmoderns take every opportunity to raise their visibility and, in effect, build a brand name. For those who succeed, the returns are high. In investment banking, for example, senior economists typically make $400,000; acknowledged stars earn up to $700,000--plus bonuses. Even a freshly minted Ph.D. can expect to make $100,00 a year.

What's different, too, is that people want to listen. With almost half of Americans owning stock, and globalization evident to every executive, the dismal scientists have found an audience. Here are portraits of four men who represent different facets of the new economics: Courtis, the internationalist; Mark Zandi, the U.S. macro expert; David Jones, the Fed watcher; and Ken Mayland, the rookie.

It's lunchtime Tuesday, and Courtis, who works for Goldman Sachs, is addressing the Asia Society at the Bank of America's downtown L.A. office tower. He opens with a joke that goes like this: An economist comes across a flock of very handsome sheep and asks to buy one. When the farmer says they're not for sale, the economist proposes a bet. "If I can guess the exact number of your flock," says the economist, "then can I keep one?" The farmer agrees. The economist considers the flock and calculates, "437." He's right. He chooses his prize and walks away. "Not so fast," says the farmer. "If I can guess your profession, can I win my property back?" The economist agrees, judging it improbable. "You're an economist," says the farmer. "I can tell, because you just took my dog."

The 100 or so CEOs and bankers in the audience laugh. Clearly, the notion that economists are not the most pragmatic people is still alive and well. Yet when Courtis begins to talk about prospects for Asia, many in the audience begin to take notes.

Courtis is considered an authority on Asia's economies. His role is to advise on which countries offer the best investment opportunities, leaving the specifics of what companies or industries to invest in to others. A trained economist, the Canadian-born Courtis received his doctorate from the Institute of Economic and Political Studies in Paris. He's been based in Asia for more than 12 years, working most of that time for Deutsche Bank; last January he joined Goldman Sachs.

After a brief analysis of the 1997-98 Asian crisis and its aftermath, Courtis tells the crowd what they've come to hear: his view on which countries to invest in. China, he says, is moving in the right direction: Go ahead. What about Japan? It's still stuck, he says, but with all the corporate restructuring needed, he predicts an M&A boom. "If Japan was a company," Courtis says, "I'd buy it."

Courtis has a track record of calling it right. He helped Nokia steer its way through the emerging-markets crises of 1997 and 1998, and at the beginning of 1998 he advised clients, such as private equity investment fund GEMS, that Asian markets had bottomed and it was time to buy equities. He was right, and markets headed north. Courtis also warned clients in early 1997 that a financial crisis was coming in Asia. "I can talk all I want about economics," he explains, "but if I can't relate it to your business and help you make smart decisions, then it's just noise."

There used to be a time when producing research articles was the single most important aspect of a business economist's job. Not anymore. It's about sitting down with clients. In Courtis' case, that means FORTUNE 500 companies, global investment funds, central banks, and policymakers. What his clients want is insight into their specific part of the world. Courtis does not crunch the numbers himself. His expertise is in taking in information on an economy--interest rates, government policies, direct investment, exports, retail sales, fiscal position, and so on--and synthesizing all that into a global view. That makes for a grueling life as he bounces around the world. But travel, says Courtis, is an essential part of understanding the global economy. "Everyone has a piece of the puzzle," he says. "You put it all together by getting out of the office and talking to as many people as possible."

So what is he telling his clients right now? "We're entering a new Golden Age," says Courtis. He believes the U.S. stock market bottomed on Friday, Oct. 13, and that the correction that began in March is over. "We're now building the base from which all major markets in North America, Europe, and much of Asia will move to new bull market highs," he says. He predicts 1720 for the S&P, 5300 for the Nasdaq, and a new record for the Dow by the first half of 2001.

Courtis taps into Goldman's extensive global research department to provide the data from which he builds his projections. Other economists do the grunt work themselves. That's Mark Zandi's specialty. If the name seems familiar, that's not surprising: Friendly, concise, and accessible, Zandi is regularly quoted in the press (including FORTUNE). He started his consulting group in 1990 with his brother, Karl, and graduate school buddy Paul Getman. Since then it has grown into the country's third-largest economic consulting firm, with revenues of $6 million.

In September the firm changed its name to Economy.com from Dismal Sciences, a phrase coined by 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle after he read the dire predictions of the early economic thinker Thomas Robert Malthus, who argued that population growth would outstrip food production, leading to mass famine. When the partners found out that GE's CEO Jack Welch objected to reading material sourced as Dismal Sciences, they opted for a less barbed (though duller) moniker.

On the day FORTUNE visits, Zandi is conducting a research meeting in a large conference room at the firm's headquarters in West Chester, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia. He's the picture of health--fit, relaxed, and tanned from a recent trip to the Bahamas, where he spoke to 2,000 members of the Association of Asset-Backed Securities. Around the table this morning are 30 young economists out of a team of 45, making Economy.com's research team one of the biggest in the country. Dressed in khakis and a blue-and-white polo shirt, the 41-year-old Zandi sets the tone for the casual office.

Today the meeting starts with friendly banter about the previous day's team-building exercise, an afternoon of paintball. (Zandi insists that he was the main target.) Three rottweilers, owned by Getman, burst into the room and chase one another out again. Then the team gets down to business--setting the research agenda for the month ahead.

It's a normal day in the office for Zandi, although these days he's spending more time on the road, giving speeches and visiting clients. He pops into a meeting in another conference room with a client from GM's finance arm to make sure he's getting the data the group needs, and then goes back to his office to finish a consumer credit risk report for Freddie Mac and a speech he's giving to the Conference Board of Canada.

Zandi's phone rings constantly. Frequently it's the press asking for data for a chart on GDP or seeking a comment on the latest inflation figures. Zandi answers each request as if he has all the time in the world. "I only have two things in my life," he says. "My family and work. If there's any time left over, then I play sports." Zandi's a runner, the coach of his 10-year-old son's soccer team, and a tennis player. You can imagine he'd be an ideal partner to have on the court--fast, powerful, focused, and supportive.

Times haven't always been this good for the three business partners. When they started out, with Ph.D.s from the University of Pennsylvania, they worked out of Getman's bachelor pad and lived off credit cards. Their idea was to take on the two giants in the economic data and consulting industry, WEFA and DRI. "It was touch and go," says Zandi. Not only was his wife pregnant with their first child at the time but the firm faced a lawsuit from WEFA, where Zandi and Getman had worked while finishing their Ph.D.s, accusing them of stealing clients. (The suit was later dropped.)

Five years later the Internet changed their fortunes--for the better. All of a sudden, the data and analysis Zandi was providing in hard copy and mailing out to clients, on subjects such as where productivity was growing the fastest or which region was experiencing rising unemployment, could be moved onto the Web and sold in pieces. That brought costs down while allowing the company to deliver precision research. Today Economy.com provides 30,000 data sets, covering everything from household-income levels to type of occupation to credit risk for 300 metro areas. Mostly the data are compiled from official sources, then reworked. For instance, unemployment figures are downloaded from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and then reorganized and made readily accessible to answer any question on the labor market. Economy.com also creates its own data sets, called value-added series, on topics like risk-adjusted returns for industries. What the firm does at the metro level, it replicates for the 50 states, 60 industries, the U.S. macroeconomy, and 100 countries.

Before the Internet, Zandi's clients would pay $10,000 to $20,000 a year to subscribe to the whole range of information the firm generated. Today companies can pay for only the data or analysis they want, and Zandi can keep an eye on what clients order and adjust his research accordingly. An analysis of the pharmaceuticals industry may cost $7,000; research about the breakdown of households by income in Fort Collins, Colo., might cost $100. The largest clients buy $100,000 of data a year, and the average is about $10,000. The firm generates so much material that Zandi, in his role as U.S. macro expert, can speak with authority: He has all the details of the economy at his fingertips. For instance, he can access consumer spending patterns in, say, Bimiggi, Iowa, to flesh out how consumers around the country are reacting to higher interest rates.

The Internet has the potential to change Zandi's business even more. Right now the firm's 250 clients are mostly FORTUNE 500 companies. But because Economy.com can tailor its products and price them by the piece, Zandi expects to pick up more small and medium-sized companies and eventually individual investors. His strategy is to provide free data on the group's FreeLunch Website, which then directs people to the pay-per-view site, NoFreeLunch. Unconventional clients are beginning to get it. In October, for instance, a Baptist Church in Texas bought a report on housing costs to give to pastors considering work at the parish. Though business is humming, Zandi is not complacent. "Our biggest challenge," he says, "is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don't have anything useful to say."

That's one thing David Jones, chief economist at Aubrey G. Lanston, a bond-trading firm, has never worried about. Jones picked a niche that has always been relevant--the Federal Reserve. A Fed watcher for 30 years, Jones has called it right more often than not. That makes him a valuable source for his clients; more recently it's made him something of a star.

Although Jones is based in New York City, he's in Washington, D.C., the morning FORTUNE catches up with him, talking to the National Press Foundation. Jones speaks in plain English, inserts lots of anecdotes about Greenspan, and is passionate about his subject. The crowd listens carefully.

Jones assumes the air of an insider, a role he plays up even though he has not actually worked at the Fed for more than 30 years, when he did a short stint after getting his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, he is able to explain the nuances that often make the workings of the Fed seem like a secret society. But the real value Jones brings to his firm is this: He can interpret Greenspan's deliberately inscrutable utterances and translate them into words of one syllable--"buy" or "sell"--for bond traders.

For instance, throughout the year Greenspan effectively said that oil prices were unlikely to create inflationary pressures. In a statement by the Fed on Oct. 3, Jones noticed that the chairman had changed his wording. "I looked at what he said, and thought, Jesus, that's kind of wild for Alan," explains Jones. "What he was saying was that because of oil prices, he's not going to ease anytime soon." So Jones told his bond traders and clients to sell. Those who listened to his advice were glad they did, as in the following days other major trading houses sold bonds.

Jones does not admit to making any truly awful calls, though he concedes he can get small things wrong. For example, he predicted that Greenspan would get rid of the tightening bias at the last Fed meeting, and instead it was retained. His best call? Jones believes it was in January 1994, when everyone was long on bonds in the expectation that the Fed would lower rates. Jones went the other way, predicting that the Fed not only would raise rates but would keep doing so for some time. Those who listened sold bonds ahead of the decade's worst bond-market crash. At the moment Jones believes the Fed has finished tightening but says it will be the second quarter of next year before rates are cut.

How does Jones reach his conclusions? By careful analysis of every word, statement, and speech that every member of the Fed makes. Jones also gets information from journalists who may have just had a meeting with Greenspan and then called him to make sense of it. He doesn't have much contact with the Fed chairman himself. The last time he sat down with Greenspan was two years ago, for a total of 45 minutes.

What makes Jones different from previous generations of Fed watchers is the way he has deliberately built his profile. Jones began appearing on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour about 25 years ago and switched to CNN in the 1980s as the stock market and the Fed moved onto the radar screens of American households. "My aim has been to make sure that when the Fed does something, I'm on the top of everyone's Rolodex or whatever the modern equivalent is," he says. He has also written three books on the Fed, the most recent being The Buck Starts Here: How the Federal Reserve Can Make or Break Your Financial Future, published in 1995. What next? At 62, Jones says he wants a less harried life. He's planning to use his quasi-celebrity status to start his own consulting business at his family's vacation home south of Colorado Springs.

While Jones dreams of stepping off the corporate grind to set up shop on a picnic bench overlooking a lake (in the summer, anyway), many economists are being forced out on their own. Bank research departments, in particular, have been slashed. For instance, Wells Fargo has eliminated 75% of its economics department over the past four years while UBS Warburg and Paine Webber (now in the process of merging) are letting economists go.

This trend is not news to Ken Mayland, who was chief (and only) economist at KeyCorp bank in Cleveland until March, when he became a casualty of corporate cost cutting. Though the bank has kept Mayland on retainer, it now buys most of its economics information from outside providers--in fact, from companies like Zandi's. So Mayland has become his own show.

Mayland is sitting in a big easy chair in the living room of his home in Pepper Pike, a middle-class Ohio suburb with oak-lined streets and big sloping backyards that snuggle into forests. His office is a small room off a corridor at the side of the living room. Stocked with a new computer, fax, phone, and TV, the office overlooks the garden, which he is fond of tending. Mayland has positioned his desk so that when deer saunter in to eat his shrubs, he can send his dog, Boomer, to chase them away. The location perhaps accounts for the name of his firm--ClearView Economics. This morning Mayland's 11-year-old son, Scott, is sick and home from school. "On days like today, it's good to be working from home," says Mayland, whose wife is a partner in a Cleveland law firm.

Mayland doesn't seem to have quite settled into his new life just yet. That's hardly surprising. He's been a company man his entire career. Mayland, 49, joined First Pennsylvania Bank in Philadelphia as chief economist when he was finishing his Ph.D. in economics, also from Penn--and stayed for 16 years. Then he moved to Cleveland, where he worked for KeyCorp for 11 years.

Mayland has an appealing, open face and is quick with a joke. He's a good presenter, which makes him popular on the speaking circuit: He gets $4,000 to $6,000 a speech. October has been a busy month. There was a speech to the Ohio Development Association in Columbus, a three-day road show for KeyCorp's clients in Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati, meetings with private banking clients, a regular monthly meeting with KeyCorp's asset-management side, and finally a speech on the outlook for the economy and asset prices to the National Tooling & Machining Association.

In between speaking events, Mayland writes an almost daily commentary under his ClearView Economics banner following the release of key economic data that he e-mails free to 40 journalists. He also concentrates on generating deeper analyses to help businesses and investors make strategic decisions. For example, he showed that the monthly survey by the National Association of Purchasing Managers could help predict the performance of S&P financial stocks. At the beginning of the year, he used that insight to predict that financial stocks would rally. He was right. Such calls, he hopes, will help him build a track record that he can sell to clients. "It's not an activity that pays at this point," says Mayland of his work. "It's more about building a brand name." As part of that effort he is attentive to the press, and he is regularly quoted in the financial media. "I know economics," says Mayland. "What I need to learn now is marketing."

Can he make it? Given his minimal overhead, Mayland can keep going. To build a real business, though, Mayland needs more clients than his old company. It would help if he could break into the national speaking circuit. Says Mayland: "To be successful in this business, you have to be more than a good economist and pull out a bagful of numbers. You have to be an entertainer." That's one skill they don't teach economists in any Ph.D. program.

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