[An aside more important to me than what follows herein: I believe that Robin Hanson deserves a hearty "Huzzah!" for his upcoming career move. But I'll let him tell us more, if he so chooses.]
I'd criticized Krugman's analysis of network effects both for using the wrong
terminology (calling it "externalities") and for failing to adequately
accomodate new evidence regarding the QWERTY myth. Robin Hanson wrote:
>Searching for "Liebowitz Margolis network effects" at AltaVista gets me this
The criticisms of those authors regarding the misnomer "network externalities"
comes in other, earlier work. I believe that it is available online, via one
or both of the author's academic homepages, though I read it in hardcopy
texts. An earlier Liebowitz & Margolis text--the Reason piece?--also claimed
that Krugman was deliberately avoiding facts about his beloved QWERTY case.
>10/98 CATO policy analysis: http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/cato.html
>These authors don't complain about the phrase "network externality", and I
>see no reason to complain either.
As I noted, they do complain about the phrase, though perhaps not in the work you looked at. I've typed and erased a few clumsy attempts to paraphrase their argument; better I should leave it to someone more expert than I. I left my collection of Liebowitz & Margolis papers at my other office, however, or else I would offer you a helpful quote.
Tom