ABSTRACT
Although economists have been active as govemment advisers since the time of the Cameralists, l it is within living memory that they have formed a recognizable cadre within the public service. Thus, while in the late 1920s Winston Churchill could jest about the Treasury's tarne economist, R. G. Hawtrey, being 'released from the dungeon in which we were said to have immured hirn, have his chains struck off and the straw brushed from his hair and dothes to be admitted to the light and warmth of the Treasury Boardroom' (Roseveare 1969), sixty years later govemment economic advisers have become public figures with the popular attribution of great influence if not power. Nor is this an exdusively British phenomenon (for evidence, see Coats 1981).
