EXCLUSIVE: Carney faces plagiarism accusations for 1995 PhD thesis

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OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Mark Carney has been accused of taking other people’s ideas as his own in the federal election campaign.

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It isn’t new.

The National Post obtained a copy of Carney’s 1995 thesis for his doctorate in economics from Oxford University titled “The Dynamic Advantage of Competition.” It shows 10 instances of apparent plagiarism, according to the judgment of three university academics who reviewed the material.

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In several sections of his thesis, Carney used full quotes, paraphrases, or slightly modified quotes from four previous works without proper acknowledgement or attribution.

“He’s just directly repeating without quotations. That’s what we call plagiarism,” said Geoffrey Sigalet, an assistant professor and member of UBC Okanagan president’s advisory committee on student discipline, which handles plagiarism cases for the university.

The National Post provided the 10 examples to Carney’s campaign team. He was sworn in as prime minister on March 14, and is currently running in an election that will be held April 28.

Carney’s campaign at first provided a statement from his doctoral supervisor at Oxford University.

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“I believe you are mischaracterizing this work. As an academic of nearly 40 years, I see no evidence of plagiarism in the thesis you cited nor any unusual academic practices,” said American economist Margaret Meyer, Official Fellow of Economics at Nuffield College, in the provided statement.

“Mark’s thesis was evaluated and approved by a faculty committee that saw his work for what it is: an impressive and thoroughly researched analysis that set him apart from his peers,” added Meyer.

When you have something lifted verbatim from a source, in there without quotation marks or citation… that constitutes plagiarism

Oxford University defines plagiarism as “(p)resenting work or ideas from another source as your own … by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.”

A professor who is also a graduate from Oxford University, speaking on background out of fear of being sued by Carney, agreed that the problematic passages in the Liberal leader’s thesis would fall within the plagiarism definition.

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“Oxford’s guidelines are not atypical from other universities,” he said.

“When you have something lifted verbatim from a source, in there without quotation marks or citation… that constitutes plagiarism,” added the professor.

Oxford University administrators were also provided the 10 examples of apparent plagiarism but did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

Thursday evening, hours after sending Meyer’s statement, a spokesperson for the Liberal campaign, Isabella Orozco-Madison, called the allegations of plagiarism an “irresponsible mischaracterization” of Carney’s work.

While Carney refers extensively in his thesis to Michael E. Porter’s 1990 book “The Competitive Advantage of Nations,” he duplicates parts of Porter’s work and presents several sentences — sometimes with minor tweaks to the wording — as his own.

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In one paragraph on page 206 of Carney’s thesis, the similarities are especially stark.

Carney wrote: “First, government intervention can impede international competition and artificially support domestic profits.”

Later, he adds: “Second, in an industry or an economy where many firms are following harvesting strategies, firms may maintain profitability even though they are losing competitiveness.”

Those are virtually the exact sentences that can be found in Porter’s book on page 797 — except Carney added the extra determiner “an” and the adverb “even.” He did not use quotation marks or add a footnote to reference Porter’s work anywhere in the entire paragraph.

Meyer, his doctoral supervisor at Oxford, said “it is typical that overlapping language appears” when sources are “frequently referenced in an academic text.”

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“For example, over the course of this more than 300-page thesis, the Michael Porter book… is cited dozens of times. Within his thesis, Mark acknowledged, cited, scrutinized, and expanded on this piece,” she said.

In a recent interview with a CBC radio program in Toronto, Meyer noted that Carney finished his thesis “remarkably quickly,” in less than two years. She also noted that his PhD thesis, which she said she keeps in her office, is “twice as long” as her own.

“The fact that he could get to grips with much more material than most students typically do in a shorter time and produce a longer thesis pretty much set him apart,” she told CBC.

Other examples of apparent plagiarism include a slight rewording of someone else’s sentence.

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Carney wrote: “There are three reasons why domestic profitability is not a good indicator of true international competitive advantage.” He did not cite his source.

The original sentence in Porter’s book was as follows: “Domestic profitability is not a good indication of true international competitive advantage for three important reasons.”

Sigalet said the above example might be considered by some as more of a “grey area,” but it would still constitute plagiarism according to Oxford standards.

“Internally, in UBC, we would consider it patchworking if it did not have the direct citation next to it, and it doesn’t,” he said. “Even when you’re rewording, you need to cite.”

Later in his thesis, Carney virtually duplicates an excerpt from Jeremy C. Stein’s 1989 article “Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior” published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Carney did not attribute the passage to Stein.

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While Stein writes in his article: “In a steady state signal-jamming equilibrium, managers will borrow a constant amount each period from the next period’s earnings, and the market will correctly anticipate this borrowing.”

Carney made it slightly shorter: “In the steady state equilibrium, the managers will borrow a constant amount each period, and the market will correctly anticipate this borrowing.”

In developing a model to illustrate how domestic rivalry can promote a “dynamically-efficient” corporate strategy, Carney duplicated a sentence from H.S. Shin’s 1994 article in the RAND Journal of Economics, and only altered a single word.

Shin wrote: “The setting for the game is a pure exchange economy with a finite number of states.”

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Carney wrote: “The setting for the game is a pure exchange economy with a continuous number of states.” He did not cite his source.

In other cases, Carney duplicates another author’s sentences with minor changes by replacing “for example” with “e.g.” or changing one or a few words word, “be” to “become,” or “likelihood” to “probability.”

For example, Carney wrote the following on page 190 of his thesis: “This argument assumes that shareholders are imperfectly informed and that temporarily low earnings may cause the stock to be undervalued increasing the probability of a takeover at an unfavourable price.”

Stein, in an article for the Journal of Political Economy, wrote seven years earlier: “If stockholders are imperfectly informed, temporarily low earnings may cause the stock to become undervalued, increasing the likelihood of a takeover at an unfavorable price.”

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Again, Carney did not add proper citation to indicate that he lifted the author’s words, nor did he add quotation marks.

But Carney did include a footnote to Stein’s work in a subsequent sentence in which he raised a different point.

The academics interviewed for this article dismissed the idea that Carney would have lacked the proper knowledge to properly attribute his sources at a PhD level.

Even when you’re rewording, you need to cite

Furthermore, the examples mentioned in this article do not pertain to one single section of his thesis.

“It seems like it’s all over the dissertation, not just one part,” said Sigalet.

On its website, Oxford University says it regards plagiarism “as a serious matter.”

“Cases will be investigated and penalties may range from deduction of marks to expulsion from the University, depending on the seriousness of the occurrence. Even if plagiarism is inadvertent, it can result in a penalty,” reads the website.

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Carney benefitted from an illustrious career after he completed his PhD, getting hired and promoted at the prestigious investment bank Goldman Sachs, working at a senior level of the Department of Finance, then governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and chairman of Brookfield Asset Management. He was appointed prime minister after winning the federal Liberal party’s leadership race in a landslide.

But social status hasn’t stopped universities from revoking degrees. And in recent years, many European ministers have had to resign following allegations that some of their university work was plagiarized or after having been stripped of some of their academic credentials.

Last year, Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University amid allegations of plagiarism but also after facing a heated congressional hearing over antisemitism on her campus. She denied that she plagiarized in her articles.

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National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

Mark Carney’s problematic PhD passages:

“Domestic profitability is not a good indication of true international competitive advantage for three important reasons.” — Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, 1990, p. 797.

“There are three reasons why domestic profitability is not a good indicator of true international competitive advantage.” — Mark Carney’s thesis, 1995, p. 206.

“First, government intervention can impede international competition and artificially support domestic profits.” — Porter, 1990, p. 797.

“First, government intervention can impede international competition and artificially support domestic profits.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 206.

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“Second, in an industry or economy where many firms are following harvesting strategies, firms may maintain profitability though they are losing competitiveness. Finally, differences in accounting standards in preparing financial statements make cross-national comparisons in profitability problematic, as does the lack of systematic data in many countries.” — Porter, 1990, p. 797.

“Second, in an industry or an economy where many firms are following harvesting strategies, firms may maintain profitability even though they are losing competitiveness. Third, differences in accounting standards and the lack of systematic data prevent international comparisons.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 206.

“Social norms and values affect the nature of home demand…” — Porter, 1990, p. 129.

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“Second, social norms and values affect the nature of home demand.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 90.

“Related industries are those where firms can share activities in the value chain across industries (for example, distribution channels, technology development) or transfer proprietary skills from one industry to another.” — Porter, 1990, p. 782.

“The former are industries which share activities in the value chain across industries (e.g., distribution channels or technology development) or transfer proprietary skills between them.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 84.

“If stockholders are imperfectly informed, temporarily low earnings may cause the stock to become undervalued, increasing the likelihood of a takeover at an unfavorable price…” — Jeremy Stein, “Takeover Threats and Managerial Myopia,” Journal of Political Economy, 1988, p. 61.

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“This argument assumes that shareholders are imperfectly informed and that temporarily low earnings may cause the stock to be undervalued increasing the probability of a takeover at an unfavourable price.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 190.

“Maximizing the present value of their income will be equivalent to maximizing the following utility at each time t” — Jeremy C. Stein, Efficient Capital Markets, Inefficient Firms: A Model of Myopic Corporate Behavior, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1989, p. 658.

“Maximising the present value of their income will be the same as maximising the following utility function at each time t” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 224.

“Earnings more than one period into the future can be ignored, as current decisions have no effect on such earnings.” — Stein, 1989, p. 659.

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“Our simple characterisation of the effects of harvesting means that earnings more than one period in the future can be ignored since current decisions have no effect on these earnings.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 224.

“In a steady state signal-jamming equilibrium, managers will borrow a constant amount each period from the next period’s earnings, and the market will correctly anticipate this borrowing. — Stein, 1989, p. 659.

“In the steady state equilibrium, the managers will borrow a constant amount each period, and the market will correctly anticipate this borrowing.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 225.

“The setting for the game is a pure exchange economy with a finite number of states.” — H.S. Shin, “News Management and the Value of Firms,” The RAND Journal of Economics, 1994, p. 60.

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“The setting for the game is a pure exchange economy with a continuous number of states.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 211.

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