 What was “The Legend of Arthur”?
Krugman's Life of Brian Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur." I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story. I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. 3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre. Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns."
 A criticism of reporters who do not check their facts before publishing a story.
 A comparison of the economic models of simplicity and determinism.  A criticism of reporters who do not check their facts before publishing a story.  A criticism of the direction that macroeconomic research has taken during the past 20 years.  A criticism of economic scholars who take credit for others’ work.