======================= HES POSTING ================== 
 
Just a short comment because unable to do much more at this point -- 
 
I want to thank Michael Williams for his post, which expressed 
well what I was thinking as I read the responses to Neil's query. 
 
Neil originally posted that query on the femecon list, and I 
wrote him and said I thought it was a very appropriate topic 
for the history of economic thought list. 
 
I still think so, and am amazed that so many thought not. 
 
If the re-evaluation of one's career and one's specialty is 
NOT a topic of interest to historians of economic thought, 
my goodness -- what IS? 
 
What is also interesting is when an economist who began, or 
is seen as a founder of, a particular school of thought,  
expresses dismay at the direction his progeny has taken. 
>From "Je ne suis jamais Marxiste" (I think I have that right) 
to Keynes reaction to ISLM curves (and Keynes supposed reply 
to Joan Robinson about being inconsistent -- "When someone 
convinces me I am wrong, I change my mind -- what do you do?") 
to Doug North's repudiation of narrow cliometrics to Stigler's 
pungent commentaries on the profession -- my favorite being 
on the subject of what was then called "x-inefficiency" and is 
still very much alive and well in the literature on "effort" -- 
a branch of labor management that looks to Stigler as rather 
a founding father -- 
 
    "[this type of inefficiency is ascribed to] losses of output 
due to motivational deficiencies of resource owners ... If  
management seeks to impose output-maximizing APQT [Activities, 
Pace, Quality, Time] bundles on the workers, indeed, these 
assignments of tasks would likely be "... less efficient than 
those that individuals would choose themselves under an 
acceptable set of [managerial] restraints" ... [This concept] 
characterizes as inefficiency either the existence and pursuit 
of other desired outputs or the expenditure of resources 
required for the optimal enforcement of contracts.  This 
tunnel vision of output seems entirely unrewarding:  It 
imposes one person's goal upon other persons who have never 
accepted that goal." 
 
I remember laughing when I read this, because it was so obvious 
and yet the people involved in that literature seemed oblivious 
to it -- rather like stating publicly "have you noticed any 
clothes on this emporer?"   
 
Blaug is another source of some great pointed remarks about the 
drifting tendencies of the profession. 
 
At any rate, I would have thought if any discussion list would have 
been a good source of information (which was all Neil was asking) 
about classic essays where a respected academic turns his/her  
powers of analysis on his/her own profession -- this would be the 
one. 
 
I'm not sure my examples were what Neil had in mind, but let's do 
make a distinction between critical observation and "complaining." 
 
Mary Schweitzer <[log in to unmask]> 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]