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[log in to unmask] wrote: 
 
> In short, regardless of economists' politics and the considerable merits 
> of the market-based economic system, we still have yet to get to the 
> bottom of the attraction of neoclassical economics. Game theory has 
> certainly taken off, not least because it combines more robust 
> environmental assumptions with economists' attractions to methodological 
> individualism, assumed self-interest, and instrumental rationality.  But 
> game theory doesn't deliver the determinism that has made neoclassical 
> economics so attractive (part of the reason why Nash symmetry has been so 
> appealing to game theorists themselves). Determinism and its close 
> relative, equilbrium, are still there in the interstices of the 
> respectable discourse of economists. The attraction to neoclassical 
> economics in the syllabus and as a research programme needs to be 
> explained not by the political perspectives of economists nor by the 
> merits of 'real world' market economies but by factors relating to its 
> intrinsic substance. 
 
A brief comment. The above makes the assumption that readers know and 
agree upon the meaning of "neoclassical economics." As I see it, the 
core problems in trying to answer Mr. Cullenberg's question, are (a) to 
define this term and (b) to trace the history of the concept according 
to one's definition. If we do this, I doubt that many disagreements will 
remain over the factual question that Colander raised. Of course, one's 
feelings about "the considerable merits of the market-based economic 
system" might influence one's choice of definition. The result might be 
a disagreement over definition. But such disagreements are easily 
resolved, once they are known. 
 
One question. What does the writer mean by the "factors relating to the 
intrinsic substance of neoclassical economics?"  
 
Pat Gunning, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman 
 
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