ABSTRACT
I The employment of professional economists in government is now an accepted, if occasionally controversial, fact of twentieth-century life, and since the 1930s their numbers have grown apace both in advanced countries and, more recently, in many underdeveloped countries, too.2 In the British case two periods stand out as turning points-World War II and the mid-1960s. During the intervening years, however, the number of civil service posts for professional economists remained virtually constant despite the fact that the value and significance of their contributions to the war effort had been generally acknowledged.3
