Greg Mankiw has a post on mathematics required in economics: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
Long ago Marshall said (taken from 'Economics for Mathematicians' by J.W.S. Cassels, Cambridge University Press):
"But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work on the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules-(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than an engine of enquiry. (2) Keep to them till you know you are done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you cannot succeed in 4, burn 3. This last I did often."
I wonder how many in these days of 'Publish or Perish' are prepared to do (6). Long ago, I was asked to learn and lecture on a sophisticated piece of mathematics ('iterated maps of interval', Sarkowski's Theorem etc.) by some economist friends to understand a paper by a professor from a prestigious American University. Finally, when we read the paper, we found that the conclusion was ' in a market economy with a certain utility function, poor people's choices are rational whereas the rich people's choices are whimsical'.
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