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In response to Neil Buchan's request, forwarded by  Mary Schweitzer,  
Chas Anderson wrote: 
> Would you mind naming some "of the most prominent mainstream economists" 
> who are bemoaning the current state of economics? I find that individuals 
> who write these types of works are usually those who have unsuccessfully 
> struggled with the discipline and have turned to non-rigorous approaches to 
> economics, such as offered by political or socio-economic tracts. 
>  
I have sent Neil a raft of references of economists'  
criticisms of economics - so Chas is really asking for the answer  
before the work is done.  I hope that Neil will set up the web site  
he mooted to display the collated results of responses to his query. 
 
But just off the top of my head, and in no order of eminence,  
vintage, school or anything else, I would name JR Hicks, Robert  
Clower, Mark Blaug, W Leontief, Frank Hahn, Kenneth Arrow, M Allais,  
RJ Auman, William Baumol, Ken Binmore, Ken Boulding, Daniel Hausman,  
David Kreps, E Leamer, a range of Austrians, P. Mirowski, Ron Smith,  
M. Pesaran, A Nelson, A Rubinstein, H Simon, Robert Solow, ... .  
Pending the coming of Neil's hoped for web site, Chas could 
peruse the short offerings of the contributors to the *Economic  
Journal*'s centennial issue (100, 1991), who were asked to speculate  
about the state and future of the discipline. 
 
I'm not sure if Chas means to imply that those who are  
fundamentally critical of mainstream economics necessarily abandon  
it? If so that would need some substantiation. Or does he want  
to say just that those who do so thereby abandon 'rigour'?  
Even if that term is, quite illegitimately, confined to mathematical  
formalization, we need some indication of the evidence to support  
the claim, beyond Chas' general testimony. Counter-examples exist in   
many of the papers in heterodox Journals. A name that comes  
immediately to mind is Duncan Foley, perhaps the leading US Marxian  
economist. Since mathematical modelling is neither a necessary nor a  
sufficient condition for careful, logically and empirically sound -  
ie rigorous - work, substantiation of a charge of general lack of  
rigour outside orthodoxy would require familiarization with some  
other methodologies, and lots of examples. 
 
To get the debate going, Chas, could you come up with  
an indicative list of those 
 
>individuals 
> who write these types of works [who] are usually those who have 
> unsuccessfully struggled with the discipline and have turned to 
> non-rigorous approaches to economics, such as offered by political 
> or socio-economic tracts.? 
 
Dr Michael Williams  
Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences 
De Montfort University 
 
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