Barkley Rosser writes that
"... Krugman is a flagrant plagiarist. Anybody doubting
this should look at Charles Kindleberger's remarks about "Krugman's
new trade theory" (NOT!) on p. 53 of _The Spread of Economic Ideas_
edited by David Colander, 1989, U. of Cambridge Press. According
to Colander (private conversation) Kindleberger's remarks at the
conference TO KRUGMAN'S FACE were far more scathing.
At the Jan. ASSA meetings in Boston I confronted Krugman (I
know that some of you were there) at a large session on complexity
about his "failure to cite earlier work". He said "we can talk
about citations" and then did not, being the Chair of the session.
Just to really nail the point, the diagram he put up, claiming as
his own, came straight from a 1987 paper in the _Journal of Regional
Science_ by Wolfgang Weidlich and Gunter Haag."
Krugman is also quite self-conscious that much of the so-called new
trade theory is just a formalized presentation of old lefty
arguments. In an early 1980's Fortune magazine puff piece on the new
trade theory Krugman says oh so explicitly that what the new trade
theorists were executing a "palace coup" not a "revolution". I must
say I was a bit impressed, since most of the mathematical neo-
classicals have little awareness that the ideas they have rewritten
bear any resemblance to any others. And to use those two words. He
knows what he's about.
John Parsons
Graduate School of Business
Columbia University
