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Lars Pålsson Syll

Lars Pålsson Syll

Professor at Malmö University. Primary research interest - the philosophy, history and methodology of economics.

Articles by Lars Pålsson Syll

Angus Deaton rethinking economics

5 days ago

Angus Deaton rethinking economics

Like many others, I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century. I will come to some of the substantive topics, but I start with some general failings. I do not include the corruption allegations that have become common in some debates. Even so, economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates. I should also say that I am writing about a (perhaps nebulous) mainstream, and that there are many nonmainstream economists.
Power: Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can

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Ideology and the politics of economic method

5 days ago

Ideology and the politics of economic method

Political economy has long taken a keen interest in the politics of economic ideas, but considerably less attention has been paid to the politics of economic method. Method gets neglected as the technical realm within which, it is assumed economic ideas, once established, are implemented in straightforward fashion. In fact, economic method and technique are in fact key sites in the battle of economic ideas …
Independent fiscal councils and Central Banks have been introduced in many countries in recent decades. Technocratic economic governance, involving expert oversight of and input into often rules-based economic policy, has become pervasive in advanced democracies. Governments introduced economic policy

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I heard there’s some good shit on TV tonight …

5 days ago

From Lars Syll

Time is a scarce resource on television. However, if one still — as is so often the case nowadays — uses precious airtime for trivial matters and meaningless ‘entertainment,’ there must be a reason. Television is — still — for a large part of the population one of the primary sources of information and worldview. Thus, filling program schedules with trivialities becomes an effective means to — instead of functioning as an instrument for shaping opinions and fostering reflection — push aside important information that citizens would need to exercise and develop their democratic capabilities.
Television, through its focus on personalities and banalization of various ‘affairs,’ creates a poor environment for real knowledge dissemination. Instead of serious opinion

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I heard there’s some good shit on TV tonight …

7 days ago

I heard there’s some good shit on TV tonight …

Time is a scarce resource on television. However, if one still — as is so often the case nowadays — uses precious airtime for trivial matters and meaningless ‘entertainment,’ there must be a reason. Television is — still — for a large part of the population one of the primary sources of information and worldview. Thus, filling program schedules with trivialities becomes an effective means to — instead of functioning as an instrument for shaping opinions and fostering reflection — push aside important information that citizens would need to exercise and develop their democratic capabilities.
Television, through its focus on personalities and banalization of various ‘affairs,’ creates a poor environment for

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‘New Keynesian’ unemployment — a paid vacation essentially!

8 days ago

‘New Keynesian’ unemployment — a paid vacation essentially!

Franco Modigliani famously quipped that he did not think that unemployment during the Great Depression should be described, in an economic model, as a “sudden bout of contagious laziness”. Quite. For the past thirty years we have been debating whether to use classical real business cycle models (RBC), or their close cousins, modern New Keynesian (NK) models, to describe recessions. In both of these models, the social cost of persistent unemployment is less than a half a percentage point of steady state consumption.
What does that mean? Median US consumption is roughly $30,000 a year. One half of one percent of this is roughly 50 cents a day. A person inhabiting one of our artificial model RBC or

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Concert for George (personal)

8 days ago

Concert for George (personal)

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One of the greatest concerts of all time.
With tears in my eyes, I notice that it still after more than twenty years takes my breath away.
George Harrison (1943-2001).
R.I.P.

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Die Wokeness-Bewegung — eine Kritik

8 days ago

Die Wokeness-Bewegung — eine Kritik

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Die Verteidigung der Aufklärung und die Kritik am Wokeness von Susan Neiman ist sowohl kraftvoll als auch überzeugend.
Die Ideen der Aufklärung sind trotz der zahlreichen Kritiken, die gegen sie erhoben wurden, immer noch relevant. Die Aufklärung war gekennzeichnet von einem Geist der Erkundung, der zu neuen Entdeckungen sowohl in der Wissenschaft als auch in der Kultur führte. Anstatt eine enge Weltanschauung zu fördern, ermutigte sie die Menschen, Annahmen und religiöse Überzeugungen zu hinterfragen. Sie bietet immer noch einen Rahmen für die Bewältigung einiger der drängendsten Probleme der Gesellschaft, wie zum Beispiel den Klimawandel und soziale Ungleichheit.
Obwohl die Aufklärung für ihre

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Gatekeepers of the economics profession

10 days ago

Gatekeepers of the economics profession

The power structures within the profession reinforce the mainstream in different ways, including through the tyranny of so-called top journals and academic and professional employment. Such pressures and incentives divert many of the brightest minds from a genuine study of the economy (to try to understand its workings and the implications for people) to what can only be called “trivial pursuits.” Too many top academic journals publish esoteric contributions that add value only by relaxing one small assumption in a model or using a slightly different econometric test. Elements that are harder to model or generate inconvenient truths are simply excluded, even if they would contribute to a better understanding of

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Yours truly — ett porträtt

10 days ago

Yours truly — ett porträtt

Lars Syll har en blogg som läses av många runtom i världen och är även aktiv på Twitter, två anledningar bakom hans placering på listan bland världens mest inflytelserika ekonomer. På bloggen växlar han mellan att skriva på de fem språk han kan, svenska, franska, tyska, italienska och engelska och beskriver sig själv som en renässansmänniska som vill nå ut med flera budskap …
— Som akademiker har vi tre uppgifter, att undervisa, forska och att vara med i samhällsdebatten och nå ut till offentligheten. Jag får ofta beröm för att jag är med i tv, radio och tidningar, jag tycker det är kul och att vi ska vara med som forskare …
Lars Syll ser flera svårigheter med Riksbankens självständighet som infördes i slutet av 90-talet med

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Utility theory — explaining everything and nothing

13 days ago

From Lars Syll
Despite the rise of behavioral economics, many economists still believe that utility maximization is a good explanation of human behavior. Although evidence from experimental economics and elsewhere has rolled back the assumption that human agents are entirely self-interested, and shown that altruism and cooperation are important, a prominent response has been to modify individual preference functions so that they are “other-regarding”. But even with these modified preference functions, individuals are still maximizing their own utility.
Defenders of utility maximization rightly reject critical claims that specific behavioral outcomes undermine this assumption. They do not. But this is a sign of weakness rather than strength. The problem is that utility maximization is

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Incompetent economists

13 days ago

Teaching economics students the fundamentals of the utility theory used in mainstream economics is a bit of a challenge. But I guess we all expect the professors to know what they are teaching …
At a meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA), 200 of the professional economists present were asked to answer the following question:
 “You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of seeing Eric Clapton? (a) $0, (b) $10, (c) $40, or (d)

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Finanspolitiken och de växande investeringsbehoven

14 days ago

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Ett av de grundläggande feltänken i dagens diskussion om statsskuld och budgetunderskott är att man inte skiljer på skuld och skuld. Även om det på makroplanet av nödvändighet är så att skulder och tillgångar balanserar varandra, så är det inte oväsentligt vem som har tillgångarna och vem som har skulderna.
Länge har man varit motvillig att öka de offentliga skulderna eftersom ekonomiska kriser i mångt och mycket fortfarande uppfattas som förorsakade av för mycket skulder. Men det är här fördelningen av skulder kommer in. Om staten i en lågkonjunktur ‘lånar’ pengar för att bygga ut järnvägar, skola och hälsovård, så är ju de samhälleliga kostnaderna för detta minimala eftersom resurserna annars legat oanvända. När hjulen väl börjar snurra kan både de

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Utility theory — explaining everything and nothing

14 days ago

Utility theory — explaining everything and nothing

Despite the rise of behavioral economics, many economists still believe that utility maximization is a good explanation of human behavior. Although evidence from experimental economics and elsewhere has rolled back the assumption that human agents are entirely self-interested, and shown that altruism and cooperation are important, a prominent response has been to modify individual preference functions so that they are “other-regarding”. But even with these modified preference functions, individuals are still maximizing their own utility.
Defenders of utility maximization rightly reject critical claims that specific behavioral outcomes undermine this assumption. They do not. But this is a sign of weakness

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How economists reshape the world

14 days ago

How economists reshape the world

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To yours truly, the real value of Appelbaum’s meticulously researched history of how economists have come to increasingly influence public policies in modern societies, is that it shows how fundamentally ideological economics is. Of course, you never hear anyone at our seminars telling the lecturer that the assumptions on which his models are built are only made for ideological reasons. But that does not necessarily mean — whether on the surface or not — that “academic analysis is judged on its merits”. What it means is that we have a catechism that no one dares to question. And that catechism has become hegemonic for particular reasons, one of which may very well be of an ideological nature.
The models

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But once, we were here …

14 days ago

But once, we were here …

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One of the greatest movie scenes ever.
Both the movie and soundtrack of this magnificent classic are epic.
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In loving memory of my brother, Peter ‘Uncas’ Pålsson.

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O Magnum Mysterium

14 days ago

Like Arvo Pärt’s music, Ola Gjeilo’s gives a sense of connecting with a world beyond the world.
O Magnum Mysterium, with its choral textures shifting between unison singing, polyphony, and homophony, manages to convey the profound serene beauty and mystery of our human existence.
Gjeilo’s masterpiece has been recorded dozens of times.
This is the greatest of them all:
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Vad ALLA bör veta om statistik

15 days ago

Vad ALLA bör veta om statistik

Även om man inte själv har tänkt sig producera statistik, bör alla som ägnar sig åt akademiska studier i någon form ha nog kunskaper för att förstå och värdera statistik på ett korrekt sätt. Fallgroparna är många. Den här boken hjälper med förtjänstfull pedagogisk handledning att få läsaren att undvika dessa.

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Why not all economists like yours truly

16 days ago

Why not all economists like yours truly

Yesterday, one of my economics students amused herself by asking a famous AI chatbot “Why not all economists like Lars Syll” and got this — I guess pretty accurate — response …
Professor Lars Pålsson Syll is a vocal critic of mainstream economics and advocates for pluralism in economic thinking.
Overall, Lars Syll is recognized as a prominent figure in the realm of heterodox economics and critical inquiry into the foundations of mainstream economic thought.
Some economists may be critical of Lars Syll for several reasons:
Disagreement with Heterodox Views: Syll is known for advocating heterodox economic perspectives and criticizing mainstream neoclassical economics. Economists who adhere closely to mainstream

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The problem with model-based explanations in economics

17 days ago

The problem with model-based explanations in economics

One of the most important tasks of social sciences is to explain the events, processes, and structures that take place and act in society.
Explanations are important within science since the choice between different theories hinges in large part on their explanatory powers. The most reasonable explanation for one theory’s having greater explanatory power than others is that the mechanisms, causal forces, structures, and processes it talks of, really do exist.

All explanations of a phenomenon have preconditions that limit the number of alternative explanations. These preconditions significantly influence the ability of the different potential explanations to actually explain anything.
But could one

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You’ve got a friend

17 days ago

You’ve got a friend

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In loving memory of Bengt Nilsson — a friend non plus ultra.
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you

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The problem with economics — too much maths, too little history

20 days ago

From Lars Syll
Mainstream economists have always wanted to use their hammer, and so have decided to pretend that the world looks like a nail. Pretending that uncertainty can be reduced to risk and that all activities, relations, processes, and events can be adequately converted to pure numbers, have only contributed to making economics irrelevant and powerless when confronting real-world financial crises and economic havoc.
How do we put an end to this intellectual cataclysm? How do we re-establish credence and trust in economics as a science? Five changes are absolutely decisive.
(1) Stop pretending that we have exact and rigorous answers to everything. Because we don’t. We build models and theories and tell people that we can calculate and foresee the future. But we do this based on

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Kvantitet framför kvalitet i den högre utbildningen

21 days ago

Kvantitet framför kvalitet i den högre utbildningen

Krisen i den svenska skolan har nått högskolan. I dagens Kaliber berättar universitets-lärare om studenter med låga förkunskaper, om krav som sänks och om ett ersättnings-system som ger mer pengar ju fler studenter som godkänns …
Lars Pålsson Syll är professor i samhällskunskap och undervisar bland annat blivande lärare i statistik. Sedan han började undervisa för 30 år sedan har antalet högskolestudenter mer än fördubblats. Lars Pålsson Syll poängterar att det fortfarande finns lysande studenter, men att genomsnittet tycks ha sjunkit.
— De kommer med mindre i bagaget än vad jag och andra universitetslärare förväntar oss …
Hur hanterar ni det här? Är det då fler som blir underkända eller sjunker kraven,

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20 Best Econometrics Blogs and Websites in 2024

22 days ago

20 Best Econometrics Blogs and Websites in 2024

Yours truly, of course, feels truly honoured to find himself on the list of the world’s 20 Best Econometrics Blogs and Websites.
1. The Stata Blog
3. Cambridge Econometrics Blog
9. How the (Econometric) Sausage is Made
14. Lars P Syll
Pålsson Syll received a PhD in economic history in 1991 and a PhD in economics in 1997, both at Lund University. He became an associate professor in economic history in 1995 and has since 2004 been a professor of social science at Malmö University. His primary research areas have been in the philosophy, history, and methodology of economics.

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Econometrics — a second-best explanatory practice

22 days ago

Econometrics — a second-best explanatory practice

While appeal to R squared is a common rhetorical device, it is a very tenuous connection to any plausible explanatory virtues for many reasons. Either it is meant to be merely a measure of predictability in a given data set or it is a measure of causal influence. In either case it does not tell us much about explanatory power. Taken as a measure of predictive power, it is limited in that it predicts variances only. But what we mostly want to predict is levels, about which it is silent. In fact, two models can have exactly the same R squared and yet describe regression lines with very different slopes, the natural predictive measure of levels. Furthermore even in predicting variance, it is entirely

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For as long as it takes

24 days ago

For as long as it takes

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To all my brothers and sisters in Ukraine, fighting the Russian invasion for two years now.
May God be with you.
Never give in. Never give up.

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Keynes visar vägen ut ur krisen

25 days ago

Keynes visar vägen ut ur krisen

Egentligen är det märkligt att den ekonomiska mainstreamteorins företrädare inget verkar vilja lära av historien och åter under senaste tiden stått tämligen handfallna inför den nuvarande ekonomiska krisens härjningar runtom i världen. Speciellt erfarenheterna av den stora depressionen under mellankrigstiden borde annars vara lärorika.
Att den neoklassiska ekonomiska teorin stod handfallen när denna bröt ut i slutet på 1920-talet var kanske inte så konstigt när man ser på hur den etablerade teorin vid tiden såg ut. Det centrala antagandet var att utbudet skapade sin egen efterfrågan. Var investeringarna för stora i förhållande till efterfrågan, höjde man räntan och folk efterfrågade lånemedel mindre och sparade mer. Räntan

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