Lars P. Syll

The great debt debate — Thomas Piketty and Michael Hudson .[embedded content]

‘New Keynesian’ macroeconomics — worse than useless Macroeconomic models may be an informative tool for research. But if practitioners of ‘New Keynesian’ macroeconomics do not investigate and make an effort of providing a justification for the credibility of the assumptions on which they erect their building, it will not fulfill its tasks. There is a gap between its aspirations and its accomplishments, and without more supportive evidence to...

Revisiting Myrdal’s ‘solution’ to the problem of value-bias Recognition of the phenomena of rationalization and mystification as the effects of unconscious interference enables us to pinpoint the error in an influential ‘solution’ to the problem of ‘value-bias’, authorized inter alia by Myrdal. On this solution, recognizing that value-neutrality is impossible, all the social scientist needs to do is state his or her own value assumptions fully and...

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Top 100 Economics Blogs 10. Naked Capitalism 46. Stumbling and Mumbling 63. Lars P Syll | Non-ergodic, realist and relevant economics 66. Real-World Economics Review Blog 74. Greg Mankiw’s Blog 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 March 2011. Now, ten years later and...

How is a philosophy of science possible? What is the relation between science and philosophy? Do they compete with one another or speak of different worlds? Neither position is acceptable … Philosophy is distinguished by the kinds of considerations and arguments it employs. It does not consider a world apart from that of the various sciences. Rather it considers just that world, but from the standpoint of what can be established about it by a priori...

Modern mainstream economics relies to a large degree on the notion of probability. To at all be amenable to applied economic analysis, economic observations allegedly have to be conceived as random events that are analyzable within a probabilistic framework. But is it really necessary to model the economic system as a system where randomness can only be analyzed and understood when based on an a priori notion of probability? When attempting to convince us of the necessity of...

Critical realism — making sense of science .[embedded content]

Revealed preference theory — an empty tautology The experiment reported here was designed to reflect the fact that revealed preference theory is concerned with hypothetical choices rather than actual choices over time. In contrast to earlier experimental studies, the possibility that the different choices are made under different preference patterns can almost be ruled out. We find a considerable number of violations of the revealed preference axioms,...

Till minnet av en vän (personal) År 2018 var — precis som de flesta år — ett år med både glädje och sorg. För mig kommer året ändå alltid att främst förknipppas med att det var året då Bengt Nilsson, min bäste vän sedan mer än trettio år, gick ur tiden. Under många år åkte vi på sommaren i väg ut i Europa. Första gången var 1988. Då gick färden med vår gamla rostiga Merca till Berlin och Prag. Sista gången var sommaren 2018. Då gick färden till Flensburg,...