In Defense of Synthetic Karl Marx: A Reply to Joseph Francis

Phillip W. Magness and Michael Makovi

Econ Journal Watch, 2024, vol. 21, issue 2, 385–414

Abstract: In this comment we reply to Joseph Francis’s challenges to our 2023 Journal of Political Economy article, especially challenges to our econometric analysis of Karl Marx’s citation patterns in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. We show that Francis misunderstands and misrepresents the findings of our synthetic control method analysis of Marx, and we provide additional robustness testing to account for and rule out his main objections. We examine Francis’s proposed alternative metrics from the JSTOR academic journal database, and show that his results are compromised by duplicated citations in his tabulations and other measurement biases. We examine the historical literature around Marx’s intellectual dissemination, and find additional support for our thesis. Both empirical and qualitative evidence are strongly consistent with the findings of our Synthetic Karl Marx study.

Keywords: Karl Marx; Russian Revolution; synthetic control method; quantitative methods; intellectual history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B14 B24 B31 B51 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:21:y:2024:i:2:p:385-414

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