ABSTRACT
It has been suggested that modern mainstream economics is dominated by a single approach: mathematical modelling (Lawson 1997). It has further been suggested that this approach is not particularly successful. Associations are theorised and models are constructed, associations sometimes hold for a brief period of time and then inevitably break down. The result, according to some, is a discipline ‘so far removed from anything that remotely resembles the real world that it is often difficult to take the subject seriously’ (Clower 1989). Some express this view even more strongly. Blaug, for example, argues that ‘Modern economics is sick; Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing’ (Blaug 1997). Such was the dissatisfaction with the discipline in this respect that a group of French students organised a petition in 2000 demanding a ‘return to reality’ in economic methodology (Devine 2002). This movement became known as Post-Autistic Economics (PAE). The French students branded mainstream economics ‘autistic’ due to its (1) over-simplistic view of the world, (2) excessive reliance on mathematics and (3) refusal to integrate with other disciplines.
