On decay

Robert Gibbons wrote:

When I first read Coase’s (1984: 230) description of the collected works of the old-school institutionalists – as “a mass of descriptive material waiting for a theory, or a fire” – I thought it was (a) hysterically funny and (b) surely dead-on (even though I had not read this work). Sometime later, I encountered Krugman’s (1995: 27) assertion that “Like it or not, … the influence of ideas that have not been embalmed in models soon decays.” I think my reaction to Krugman was almost as enthusiastic as my reaction to Coase, although I hope the word “embalmed” gave me at least some pause.

Thanks to several MR readers for recommending this paper.  I would have written: "Like it or not, the influence of ideas soon decays."