Stigler's conjecture
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Stigler's conjecture is the half-serious "theorem" proposed by the economist George Stigler that the credit for every idea in economics (and possibly other fields) is always given to the second person to have discovered it, the original initiator failing to get a mention.
An example of this conjecture would be Cournot's anticipation of Alfred Marshall's supply and demand framework in 1848, or Copernicus's earlier formulation of Gresham's law.
As it happens, the Stigler conjecture applies to the Stigler's assertion itself, as it didn't become a "conjecture" until named so by George Stigler's son, Stephen.
References
- Stigler, G. J. (1982a). The Economist as Preacher, and Other Essays. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Stigler, S. M. (1980). Stigler's law of eponymy. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 39: 147-58 (Merton Frestschrift Volume, F. Gieryn (ed)).
- Stigler, S. M. (1983). Who discovered Bayes's theorem? The American Statistician, 37(4): 290-6.
External link
- http://cba.unomaha.edu/faculty/adiamond/WEB/DiamondPDFs/stigecs17.pdf
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