Who are the many who are pointing out errors? What are the errors?

My view of Hayek in a capsule is that he came up with a great observation about localized information but did not develop it into what is now mechanism design theory because of his lack of interest in mathematical tools. Fortunately, many other smart people stepped in and created the theory anyway and are still making advances.

I fear theory unconstrained by empirical testing, any valid sort of empirical testing. I realize that ABM can be seen as such a check, and conceivably (although as you say it is very hard, verging on the impossible) even econometrics, although its track record is not great. Using unfettered theory to "help provide intuition to policymakers about what effects might be important and how important they might be" carries the potential of an ideology, the one behind the logical proofs, hidden in the assumptions of the Foundation, pulling policy strings while potentially leading the policymakers to ruinous directions. No matter how great and transparent the proofs in the theory are, they may still be based on wildly wrong assumptions.

Never mind. The new theme broke the site. Back to the default theme with the Typekit fonts.

Well, "efficient enough" does not literally make sense; an allocation either is Pareto efficient or it is not. Also, no matter how other Romans felt about Nero's playing, stopping him would not be a Pareto improvement as long as it would drop him to a lower indifference curve. Thanks for the link to Lansburg's piece.

Sorry it took so long to approve your comment. I was away for some days and did not have my Intense Debate credentials with me:( I will check out the Montier book. Thanks for the good words and the suggestion about the Kenneth part. I am pretty sure it was not Kenneth Arrow, at least.