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Robin Neill wrote that a failure to cite correctly may be an attempt to 
take possesion of someone else's idea, to appropriate it, or to supress 
the paradigm in which the idea first appeared. 
 
In many cases such a failure to cite may also reflect sheer ignorance. In 
fact, these failures are indicative for the importance our profession 
attaches to the History of Economic Thought. 
 
I have two examples. (My source:  I got these from Jorg Glombowski in 
Osnabruck. I checked them.) 
 
The first concerns the idea that in a competitive equilibrium it does not 
matter whether capital hires labour or labour hires capital. It is 
mentioned in Samuelson's textbook without further reference. In one book 
(I think it was a book by Bowles and Gintis, but I am not sure) I saw the 
idea referred to as Samuelson's equivalence theorem. In reality it is a 
witty remark by Knut Wicksell. 
 
The second example is the underconsumption model in Paul Sweezy's "Theory 
of Capitalist Development". The model is often referred to as Sweezy's 
underconsumption model. In reality Sweezy copied the model (including the 
writing error) from Otto Bauer's Zwischen zwei Weltkriegen? (1936, pages 
351-355). The peculiar point about this example is, that Sweezy mentions 
that he got it from Bauer, but that later generations, obviously eager to 
attribute the model to Sweezy, chose to ignore the correct reference. 
 
Henk W. Plasmeijer 
 
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