Greg Mankiw reconstructs an amusing/disturbing game of political “Telephone” in which a quotation from his blog was distorted beyond all recognition in Robert Reich’s Supercapitalism:

1. Gabaix and Landier make a modelling assumption for purposes of analytic convenience.
2. I describe their model and its implications on this blog.
3. Wessel quotes part of that description in the Journal.
4. Reich reads the Journal and cites me as an authority using the partial quotation.
5. As a result, a modelling assumption morphs into an established fact.

Of course, those who have read Jonathan Rauch’s destruction of Reich’s Locked in the Cabinet know that his factual claims should be viewed with extreme skepticism.