ABSTRACT
It has often been suggested that economists, when advising governments, should restrict their activities to describing the range of consequences expected to arise as a result of any proposed economic measure, leaving it to the political process to decide whether or not the proposed measure ought to be undertaken. Nevertheless, practising economists continue to tender prescriptive economic advice to governments, which advice - if we exclude, as we must, the concept of a specified social welfare function for society as having any practical value in guiding the formulation of economic policies - generally falls into one of two categories: one that can be conveniently labelled political economy, and the other which goes by the name of allocation economics. 1 A brief word about each.
