The latest objective estimate for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. Prominent American economist Joseph E. Stiglitz put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion dollars in 2008. In September 2010 he said that our estimate "was if anything too low." The United States is to spend more than $6 billion in Iraq in 2012 even though its forces are to withdraw from the country by the end of this year.