ABSTRACT
Professional journals have opened wide their pages to papers written in mathematical language; colleges train aspiring young economists to use this language; graduate schools require its knowledge and reward its use. The mathematical-model-building industry has grown into one of the most prestigious, possibly the most prestigious branch of economics. A natural Darwinian feedback operating through selection of academic personnel contributes greatly to the perpetuation of this state of affairs. The scoring system that governs the distribution of rewards must naturally affect the makeup of the competing teams. Corporate support of economic research goes as far back as the early 1920s when Wesley Mitchell founded the National Bureau. However, it is not this concern for broad issues of public policies or even the general interest in economic growth and business fluctuations that Wesley Mitchell have in mind, but rather the fast-spreading use of advanced methods of operations research and of so-called systems analysis.
