The Winter of Our Discontent

Economists do not grow bitter gracefully. Many of them came to the subject hoping to do good and to be useful and find that they can do far less than they had expected. Many others with a theoretical bent find that they cannot now understand what the best minds in their subject are saying. Others again came to paint a great canvas and find themselves in the studio of miniaturists. Looking at, but not often studying, the pages of some learned journals or Debreu's work, they all agree: This is not what I meant, this is not what I meant at all. If they are of the right age they then write a presidential address or a lament. What I think disturbing about so much of this literature is that it is so bad-because it is so bad and because some of the authors are so distinguished, I invoke the psychological explanation I started with. But of course something is wrong. A good theory has powerful antibodies which soon destroy the carping which comes from incomprehension and hostility. But in our case the objectors are getting more strident and probably more numerous. It is therefore a welcome event when a critic appears of the calibre of Mr Kornai. Although I shall argue that he has succeeded only partially and that in a number of important instances he has missed the point, there is little doubt that, amidst all the present noise, his is one of the few grammatical voices. It is for this reason that I want to consider what he has to say in some detail. For who can doubt that there are already many, quite innocent of his book, who are invoking Kornai to aid them in some foolish pronouncement? And who can doubt that others, having spotted one of his mistakes, have already dismissed the whole enterprise? It would be a pity if the opportunity to proceed with a coherent discussion should be so sadly missed. Before we start there are a number of general things to get out of the way. (1) Kornai is not concerned with the dreary question of whether we should or should not use mathematics. Nor, although he is strongly empirically oriented, does he share the astonishing view of Professor Phelps Brown that the gathering of data and the thinking about data