Lars P. Syll

Following the greatest economic depression since the 1930s, Robert Solow in 2010 gave a prepared statement on “Building a Science of Economics for the Real World” for a hearing in the U. S. Congress. According to Solow modern macroeconomics has not only failed at solving present economic and financial problems, but is “bound” to fail. Building microfounded macromodels on “assuming the economy populated by a representative agent” — consisting of “one single combination...

.[embedded content] Zu Hause bist immer nur du Zu Hause bist immer nur du Du hast mich abgeholt und hingebracht Bist mitten in der Nacht wegen mir aufgewacht Ich hab in letzter Zeit so oft daran gedacht Hab keine Heimat, ich hab nur dich Du bist zu Hause für immer und mich In loving memory of my mother, Lisbeth. Although it is thirty-two years since she passed away, not a single day goes by without her in my mind. Those whom the gods love die young. But in dreams, I can hear...

Tony Lawson and the nature of heterodox economics Lawson believes that there is a ‘coherent core’ of heterodox economists who employ methods that are consistent with the social ontology they implicitly advance. However, Lawson also acknowledges that many also use mathematical modelling, a method that presupposes a social ontology that is in severe tension with it. Therefore, I repeat, Lawson proposes that heterodox economists in fact exist in two groups,...

Reasoning is the process whereby we get from old truths to new truths, from the known to the unknown, from the accepted to the debatable … If the reasoning starts on firm ground, and if it is itself sound, then it will lead to a conclusion which we must accept, though previously, perhaps, we had not thought we should. And those are the conditions that a good argument must meet; true premises and a good inference. If either of those conditions is not met, you can’t say whether...

.[embedded content] Un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi “dai d’illusi smammai” / Un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi solcherò / Dune Mosse … Dentro una lacrima / E verso il sole / Voglio gridare amore  / Uuh, non ne posso più  / Vieni t’imploderò / A rallentatore, e … / E nell’immenso morirò! … Questa canzone è un’opera d’arte. Musica d’altissimo livello. Meravigliosa!

Im Netz der Verschwörung .[embedded content]

Statistical power (student stuff) .[embedded content]

Mainstream economists often hold the view that criticisms of econometrics are the conclusions of sadly misinformed and misguided people who dislike and do not understand much of it. This is a gross misapprehension. To be careful and cautious is not equivalent to dislike. The ordinary deductivist ‘textbook approach’ to econometrics views the modelling process as foremost an estimation problem since one (at least implicitly) assumes that the model provided by economic theory is...

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Econometrics and the problem of unjustified assumptions There seems to be a pervasive human aversion to uncertainty, and one way to reduce feelings of uncertainty is to invest faith in deduction as a sufficient guide to truth. Unfortunately, such faith is as logically unjustified as any religious creed, since a deduction produces certainty about the real world only when its assumptions about the real world are certain … Unfortunately, assumption uncertainty...