Lars P. Syll

A couple of years ago, former chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, wrote in an article in the Financial Times, re the increased demands for stronger regulation of banks and finance: Since the devastating Japanese earthquake and, earlier, the global financial tsunami, governments have been pressed to guarantee their populations against virtually all the risks exposed by those extremely low probability events. But should they? Guarantees require the building up of a buffer of...

Telegram — the global bullshit multiplicator .[embedded content]

Joshua Angrist ‘Nobel Prize’ Lecture 2021 .[embedded content]

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Language — an amazing thing .[embedded content]

Interpretation of regression results When econometric and statistical textbooks present simple (and multiple) regression analysis for cross-sectional data, they often do it with regressions like “regress test score (y) on study hours (x)” and get the result y = constant + slope coefficient*x + error term. When speaking of increases or decreases in x in these interpretations, we have to remember that it is a question of cross-sectional data and ‘increases’...

Causal mediation and the limits of linear models (student stuff) .[embedded content]

.[embedded content] Spending a couple of hours going through a JEL survey of modern research on the gender wage gap, yours truly was struck almost immediately by how little that research really has accomplished in terms of explaining gender wage discrimination. With all the heavy regression and econometric alchemy used, wage discrimination is somehow more or less conjured away … Trying to reduce the risk of having established only ‘spurious relations’ when dealing with...

Tant Bergström hälsar och tackar från Caymanöarna … .[embedded content]

How to get from association to causation — Diversity of Evidence vs RCTs .[embedded content]