Lars P. Syll

Discovering causes from correlations .[embedded content]

MMT è due cose: è una lente di osservazione dei processi di creazione e circolazione del denaro, ed è una ricetta per la piena occupazione e la stabilità dei prezzi. Quanto alla prima, i contributi migliori di MMT sono quelli che, sviscerando i nessi tecnici tra banca centrale, banche e Tesoro, dimostrano che il denaro a disposizione della spesa pubblica proviene sempre, inevitabilmente, dalla banca centrale, e che la differenza tra finanziamento sul mercato e monetizzazione...

The gender wage gap Uber has conducted a study of internal pay differentials between men and women, which they describe as “gender blind” … The study found a 7% pay gap in favor of men. They present their findings as proof that there are issues unrelated to gender that impact driver pay. They quantify the reasons for the gap as follows: Where: 20% is due to where people choose to drive (routes/neighborhoods). Experience: 30% is due to experience … Speed:...

C’n’est pas votre argent qui f’ra mon bonheur .[embedded content]

We can either let theory guide us in our attempt to estimate causal relationships from data … or we don’t let theory guide us. If we let theory guide us, our causal inferences will be ‘incredible’ because our theoretical knowledge is itself not certain … If we do not let theory guide us, we have no good reason to believe that our causal conclusions are true either of the experimental population or of other populations because we have no understanding of the mechanisms that are...

The problems we face when using instrumental variables (student stuff) .[embedded content]

Finding the cace (student stuff) .[embedded content]

Användandet av instrumentalvariabler används numera flitigt bland ekonomer och andra samhällsforskare. Inte minst när man vill försöka gå bakom statistikens ‘korrelationer’ och också säga något om ‘kausalitet.’ Tyvärr brister det ofta rejält i tolkningen av de resultat man får med hjälp av den vanligaste metoden som används för detta syfte — statistisk regressionsanalys. Ett exempel från skolområdet belyser detta väl. Ibland hävdas det bland skoldebattörer och politiker att...

Introduction to instrumental variables .[embedded content] Great presentation, but maybe Angrist  should also have pointed out the mistake many economists do when they use instrumental variables analysis and think that their basic identification assumption is empirically testable. It is not. And just swapping an assumption of residuals being uncorrelated with the independent variables with the assumption that the same residuals are uncorrelated with an...

Rösten vi aldrig glömmer .[embedded content] .[embedded content] .[embedded content] En av våra riktigt stora sångare — Svante Thuresson — har gått ur tiden. Musik som glömskan inte rår på. RIP.