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 religious beliefs. It still provides a framework for addressing some of the most pressing problems facing society, such as climate change and social inequality.
While the Enlightenment has been criticized for its flaws and limitations, its ideas and values still have much to offer us today. Discussing

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 … points to something that can be called ‘causal spread.’ To gain knowledge of humanity, the young person needs to encounter people of various kinds. Variation is equally important in all areas of knowledge formation — encountering diversity is enlightening.
This seems entirely obvious, but the viewpoint

From Lars Syll
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 that it includes — roll the drums please — more than one household.
Yes, economists are moving at a rapid pace.  Their research has shown that the economy includes more than one household.
Gasp.
If you are a sociologist or anthropologist you are forgiven at this point for laughing out loud.
Reflect, if

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 that it includes — roll the drums please — more than one household.
Yes, economists are moving at a rapid pace.  Their research has shown that the economy includes more than one household.
Gasp.
If you are a sociologist or anthropologist you are forgiven at this point for laughing out loud.
Reflect, if

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.
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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 …..
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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 increase in tourism to be of net benefit. The victim has no way of indicating his valuation of the opportunity he has lost— no travel agency can provide him with a charter flight to the past …The key point is that more than a distributional issue is involved. Wider participation affects not just how much

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 pernicious form of junk science: the use of mathematical modeling to evaluate the impact of social policies. These studies are superficially impressive. Produced by reputable social scientists from prestigious institutions, they are often published in peer reviewed scientific journals. They are filled

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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.
Demokrati är en radikal kraft, men den har också konservatismens trygga drag: förmågan att tänka efter innan man tar förhastade beslut. Att rätta till misstag. Att inte riva ner och förstöra saker innan man funderar på om de fyller en funktion. Det är värt att försvara.
Max Jerneck

Euron har avlägsnat

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 lyssna på programmet.
Som ung vetenskap var nationalekonomin intimt sammanknippad med andra vetenskaper som filosofi och psykologi. Adam Smith, till exempel, var ju en av sin tids främsta moralfilosofer. Med tiden sökte många ekonomer medvetet att distansera sig från andra vetenskaper. Den ekonomiska

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‘These brothers and sisters of mine’

It is now more than six months since the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led terrorist groups started. Six months of unimaginable suffering in the indiscriminate war currently being fought in Gaza where families have been torn apart, homes destroyed, and thousands of innocent people have died.
This one is for you — all you innocent sons and daughters struggling to survive in war or forced to flee your homes and risking your lives.
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Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to

From Lars Syll
Unlike anthropologists … economists simply invent the primitive societies we study, a practice which frees us from limiting ourselves to societies which can be physically visited as sparing us the discomforts of long stays among savages. This method of society-invention is the source of the utopian character of economics; and of the mix of distrust and envy with which we are viewed by our fellow social scientists. The point of studying wholly fictional, rather than actual societies, is that it is relatively inexpensive to subject them to external forces of various types and observe the way they react. If, subjected to forces similar to those acting on actual societies, the artificial society reacts in a similar way, we gain confidence that there are useable connections

I dessa tider — när ljudrummet dränks i den kommersiella radions pubertalflams — har man nästan gett upp.
Men det finns ljus i mörkret.
I programmet Text och musik med Eric Schüldt — som sänds på söndagsförmiddagarna i P2 — kan man lyssna på seriös musik och en programledare som verkligen har något att säga och inte bara låter foderluckan glappa. Att få höra någon med intelligens och känsla tala om saker som vi alla går och bär på djupt inom oss — men nästan aldrig vågar prata om — är en lisa för själen.
En helg utan Schüldts tänkvärda och ofta lite melankoliska funderingar och vemodiga musik har blivit otänkbart.
I senaste programmet kunde man bland annat lyssna på Lars-Erik Larssons vackra Förklädd Gud (Op 24):
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I en tid — många kallar den ‘modern’ — då

MMT — coming to an economy near you!

Överskottsmålet är ett hål i huvudet. Riksbanken kommer inte att nå sitt inflationsmål. Euron är dysfunktionell och eurokrisen kommer tillbaka vid nästa recession. Se där tre bra utgångspunkter för den som vill förstå hur ekonomin kommer att utvecklas det närmaste året.
Låter det både stolligt, alarmistiskt och populistiskt? Möjligt, men det finns en röd tråd i dessa utsagor. De bygger på de insikter som vuxit fram i det som kallas Modern Monetary Theory, MMT.
I Sverige har MMT knappt nämnts i den publika diskussionen överhuvudtaget. En genomsökning av tidningsdatabasen Retriever, som samlar upp det mesta som skrivs i detta land med någorlunda regelbundenhet finns MMT nämnt i ett par artiklar …
Men de som har hållit

Chicago economics — out of touch with the real world

Tom Sargent is a bit out of touch with the real world up there in his office … Certain people have a capacity for ignoring facts which are patenty obvious, but are counter to their view of the world; so they just ignore them …
Sargent is a sort of tinkerer, playing an intellectual game. He looks at a puzzle to see if he can solve it in a particular way, exercising these fancy techniques.
Alan Blinder

Do you think this is too harsh? Well, then I suggest you read the following excerpt from the interview with Sargent in Arjo Klamer’s The New Classical Macroeconomics (1984):
People say that many of your assumptions are unrealistic.
It is true that these assumptions are unrealistic.
…
Do you feel

What we do in life echoes in eternity

In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your own understanding, having the ​courage to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy.
In our daily lives, courage is a capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s rights not to be humiliated or abused.
As when Rosa Parks, on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.
Courage is to do the right thing despite danger and fear.
As when Sir Nicholas Winton organised the rescue of 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Nationalekonomi — mer fiktion än vetenskap

Den värld vi lever i är i grunden osäker och kvantifierbara sannolikheter är undantaget snarare än regeln. Om ”Gud inte spelar tärning” som Einstein hävdade, skulle jag tillägga ”inte heller människor.” Världen som vi känner den kan endast i begränsad omfattning förstås utifrån antaganden om säker och fullkomlig kunskap. Dess inneboende och nästan obegränsade komplexitet och ’organiska’ samband förhindrar möjligheten att behandla den som bestående av ’atomer’ med diskret skilda, separata och stabila orsakssamband. Vår kunskap måste därför vara av en ganska bristfällig art.
Om den verkliga världen till övervägande delen är ’öppen’ och ’genuint osäker’, varför ska då våra modeller byggas på en önskan att beskriva

Feynman’s trick (student stuff)

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The Swedish for-profit ‘free’ school disaster

Neo-liberals and libertarians have always provided a lot of ideologically founded ideas and ‘theories’ to underpin their Panglossian view on markets. But when they are tested against reality they usually turn out to be wrong. The promised results are simply not to be found. And that goes for for-profit private schools too.
Sweden introduced a voucher-style reform in the 1990s and opened the market to for-profit schools. Since then the performance of the school system has deteriorated. The experiment soon turned out to be a momentous mistake. In Chile — the only other country in the world that has tried the same policy — it turned out as badly as in Sweden, and the country decided a couple of years ago to

50 years ago today

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From Lars Syll
The simple question that was raised during a recent conference … was to what extent has — or should — the teaching of economics be modified … The simple answer is that the economics profession is unlikely to change. Why would economists be willing to give up much of their human capital, painstakingly nurtured for over two centuries? For macroeconomists in particular, the reaction has been to suggest that modifications of existing models to take account of ‘frictions’ or ‘imperfections’ will be enough to account for the current evolution of the world economy. The idea is that once students have understood the basics, they can be introduced to these modifications …
I would go further; rather than making steady progress towards explaining economic phenomena professional

Angus Deaton on why and how economics must change

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Unlike anthropologists … economists simply invent the primitive societies we study, a practice which frees us from limiting ourselves to societies which can be physically visited as sparing us the discomforts of long stays among savages. This method of society-invention is the source of the utopian character of economics; and of the mix of distrust and envy with which we are viewed by our fellow social scientists. The point of studying wholly fictional, rather than actual societies, is that it is relatively inexpensive to subject them to external forces of various types and observe the way they react. If, subjected to forces similar to those acting on actual societies, the artificial society reacts in a similar way, we gain confidence that there are useable connections

Why the euro has to be abandoned

The euro has taken away the possibility for national governments to manage their economies in a meaningful way — and the people have​ had to pay the true costs of its concomitant misguided austerity policies.
The unfolding of the repeated economic crises in Euroland during the last decade has shown beyond any doubt that the euro is not only an economic project​ but just as much a political one. What the neoliberal revolution during the 1980s and 1990s didn’t manage to accomplish, the euro shall now force on us.
But do the peoples of Europe really want to deprive themselves of economic autonomy, enforce lower wages, and slash social welfare at the slightest sign of economic distress? Are increasing​ income inequality and a

The youngest member of the Meyer-Syll family — Hedda.
And yes — Ibsen is one of yours truly’s favourite dramatists …

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I loved this song when I first heard it twenty years ago.
I still do.

The man who never wavered — Alan Bates

In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your understanding, dare to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy.
In our daily lives, courage is the capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s right not to be humiliated or abused.
As when Alan Bates decided to fight The British Post Office’s unjust prosecution of more than 700 of its own local managers for theft and fraud.
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