Dani Rodrik writes about why he doesn’t do political economy any more.

In the early part of my academic career, the question that consumed me was:
“why don’t governments do what is obviously best for their societies?” Why don’t
they not reform their policies, when doing so would increase the overall size of
the economic pie? Even if they have other goals than maximizing national income,
why do they so often choose more inefficient policies (like trade restrictions)
over less inefficient ones (such as direct subsidies)? My Ph.D.
dissertation and most of my research in the next 5-7 years focused on trying to
answer these kinds of questions.

…while traditional political economy accounts surely explain some of the
pattern of policy making we observe, I don’t think they take us far in
understanding why some countries grow and others don’t. In my book, there are
lots of $100 bills left lying on the pavement. The purpose of political
entrepreneurs is to pick them up, and that of economists to point out where they
are.