====================== HES POSTING =================== 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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]