Lars P. Syll

The presumed advantage of the experimentalist approach Here, I want to challenge the popular view that “natural experiments” offer a simple, robust and relatively “assumption free” way to learn interesting things about economic relationships. Indeed, I will argue that it is not possible to learn anything of interest from data without theoretical assumptions, even when one has available an “ideal instrument”. Data cannot determine interesting economic...

Making sense of economics Robert Lucas, one of the most creative model-builders, tells a story about his undergraduate encounter with Gregor Mendel’s model of genetic inheritance. He liked the Mendelian model—“you could work out predictions that would surprise you”—though not the lab work breeding fruit flies to test it. (Economists are not big on mucking around in the real world.) Over the weekend, he enjoyed writing a paper comparing the model’s...

Yours truly among top economics influencers to follow Mainstream economics has sadly made economics increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Trying to contribute in making economics a more realist and relevant science, yours truly launched this blog in 2011. Now, ten years later and with millions of page views on it, yours truly is — together with people like e.g. Paul Krugman, Nate Silver, Dani Rodrik, Thomas Piketty, Steve Keen —...

Yours truly’s blog added to Library of Congress The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials related to the Economics Blogs Web Archive. We consider your website to be an important part of this collection and the historical record.The Library of Congress preserves important cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them … With the growing role of the web as an...

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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. Courage is to do the right thing in spite of danger and fear. As when...

En plats i mitt hjärta (personal) Östra kyrkogården i Lund är en plats som alltid betytt mycket för mig. Hit har jag kommit många gånger för att söka tröst och vila för min själ. Tre av de människor jag älskat mest i mitt liv ligger begravda här. I dag tände jag ljus för dem alla — min älskade Kristina, min bror Peter, och min vän Bengt.

Science — a messy business The obvious response of course, albeit one that econometricians occupied with fitting a line to given sets of data rarely contemplate, is to add to the ‘available data.’ Specifically the aim must be to draw consequences for, and seek out observations on, actual phenomena which allow the causal factor responsible to be identified. If, for example, bird droppings is a relevant causal factor then we could expect higher yields...

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