Academic economics often appears extraordinarily abstract and almost indifferent to the practical world of everyday economic calculation. My argument that the work of economics contributes to the making of the economy might appear to attribute excessive influence to such a discipline. The question of what economics does, however, can only be addressed by following it at work. Taking a particular experiment and tracing the narrow but well-signposted paths that connect it to other projects offers the way to a more expansive understanding of the work of economics in general and of the work of neoliberal economics in particular.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1987