ABSTRACT
The past decade has witnessed a veritable flood of literature on economic methodology and on the parlous state of economics as a scientific discipline and a profession. Strictly speaking these two subjects are distinct, for while methodology proprement dit is a branch of philosophy mainly of interest to specialists rather than to practising social scientists, concern about the state of economics embraces much broader issues, such as the methods of training new recruits, the allocation of resources within the discipline, the organisation, control and reward system in the profession, and its public reputation — which is, of course, especially affected by the economists' performance in the policy arena. There are, however, direct links between the broader and the narrower issues, for many of the economists most concerned about the state of their subject attribute its deficiencies to features and problems of the kind that figure prominently in methodological writings. Needless to say, these matters are far too varied, complex, and intractable to be treated adequately in a review article. Nevertheless, the volumes under scrutiny here touch on, and in some instances examine in detail, so many of the topics currently in dispute that they provide a suitable vehicle for some general reflections on the discipline's present state and prospects.
