Lars P. Syll

April 22, 2024, marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest philosophers in the history of philosophy.  Kant’s ideas of the Enlightenment are still relevant, despite the numerous criticisms that have been levelled against them. The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of exploration that led to new discoveries in both science and culture. Rather than promoting a narrow worldview, it encouraged people to question assumptions and...

The importance of ‘causal spread’ No doubt exists that an entirely different subject has taken over control when it comes to education in scientific methodology in almost the entire field, namely statistics … The value of the statistical regulatory system should of course not be questioned, but it should not be forgotten that other forms of reflection are also cultivated in the land of science. No single subject can claim hegemony… John Maynard Keynes …...

No sooner had I finished my comment on the irrelevancy of economics but I had confirmation — albeit unwittingly — in this morning’s Financial Times.  There on the editorial page was a short column by Soumaya Keynes talking about the rise of Hank. For those of you not on the cutting edge, “Hank” stands for Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian, as in a complicated model of the economy. Hank is a whole new way of looking at model economies, with the really big breakthrough being...

The greatest of them all Brideshead Revisited — television’s greatest literary adaptation, bar none. Eleven episodes and actors like Jeremy Irons, John Gielgud, and Laurence Olivier. Absolutely fabulous. [embedded content]

Although it’s more than forty years now since I was a research student at the ​University of California, on a rainy day like this, I sure wish I was back in Redondo Beach, Ocean Park, Venice Beach, Berkeley Marina, Tilden Park, Telegraph Avenue, Yosemite, Joshua Tree ….. [embedded content] .[embedded content]

Tourism — a critical perspective It may be noted in passing that essentially the same process, in which participation in an activity changes its form, occurs in tourism … The fact that some tourists are not in search of something different does not remove the anomaly. For if the increased activity of tourists at large deprives only one of their number of a satisfaction previously available, orthodox economic analysis provides no basis for judging the...

Applied econometrics — a messy business Do you believe that 10 to 20% of the decline in crime in the 1990s was caused by an increase in abortions in the 1970s? Or that the murder rate would have increased by 250% since 1974 if the United States had not built so many new prisons? Did you believe predictions that the welfare reform of the 1990s would force 1,100,000 children into poverty? If you were misled by any of these studies, you may have fallen for a...

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Eurofanatiker försöker köra över folket igen Efter att ha misslyckats med att få in Sverige i euron på demokratisk väg försöker nu marknadsliberaler andra metoder. ”Jag ser inget behov av en ny folkomröstning om euron” säger Liberalernas ordförande Johan Pehrson … Syftet med demokrati är inte att folket alltid vet bäst. Det är att eliter alltid lider av grupptänk och hybris, och att någonting behövs för att hejda dem när de drar i väg med sina galna idéer....

Spekulationsbubblor får konsekvenser för hela samhället. Men hur skapas de? Priserna på finansmarknaden sätts efter en annan logik än varor i vår vardag, säger professor Lars Pålsson Syll. Man köper tillgångar, inte för att använda dem, utan för att sälja dem vidare. Tulpanmanin i Holland på 1600-talet är den först kända spekulationsbubblan. Då drabbades bara de som handlade med lökar. Men i dagens globaliserade värld påverkas många fler när marknaden kraschar. Här kan du...