The Three Trillion Dollar War is a 2008 book by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes, both of whom are American economists.

[6] The Stiglitz-Bilmes work builds on an earlier study by Yale economist William Nordhaus, who predicted in 2002 that the war could reach $2 trillion if it went badly.

He believes better knowledge of both the budgeted and implicit costs of the war as spelled out in the book will further a more coherent dialogue on present and future related policy matters.

In a review of the 2006 NBER Working Paper the book is based on, economist Alan Krueger argued that Bilmes and Stiglitz's estimate was too high for three reasons.

[9] Other academics, including John Lott, Richard Zerbe, and Edgar Browing, echoed those criticisms, and in addition challenged the Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties to determine the number of Iraqi deaths.