"The Eatwell-Milgate-Newman policy of publishing multiple entries with slightly different titles for identical subjects constantly produces curious results... On balance, a policy of presenting competing opinions under the same title would have been vastly preferable to the Eatwell-Milgate-Newman policy of several entries under different titles on what is in fact one and the same topic." -- Mark Blaug, Economics Through the Looking Glass: The Distorted Perspective of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1988.An example I found would be Walter Eltis' article "Falling Rate of Profit" and N. Okishio on "Choice of Technique and Rate of Profit". Neither references the other. Sometimes the Eatwell-Milgate-Newman policy makes no difference, e.g. in successive articles on "Competition," "Competition: Austrian Conceptions," "Competition: Classical Conceptions," and "Competition: Marxian Conceptions".
Wikipedia also has closely related articles with different names. Here are some examples in economics:
- Arrow-Debreu Model and General Equilibrium
- Comparative Advantage and Heckscher-Ohlin Model (Only the former is part of the International Trade template)
- Labor Theory of Value and Law of Value (Only the latter appears in the Marxist Theory template)
- Marginalism and Neoclassical Economics
The Law of Value/Labor Theory of Value and Marginalism/Neoclassical economics pairs closely follow Blaug's complaint. Each member of a pair are written from very different perspectives. (I've been in edit wars with the crank maintaining the marginalism entry.)
By the way, both the comparative advantage and the Heckscher-Ohlin entry, including related entries on HO theorems, contain the usual errors about capital. That is, these entries are simply incorrect.
0 comments:
Post a Comment