Lars P. Syll

Maradona was more than just an extraordinary footballer. He was also a complicated social icon. That further distinguishes him from other footballers, though Pele also has some of that… He was both rewarded by and terribly exploited by the system. The system treated him like a “race horse”. They wanted him to play at all cost and pumped him with drugs. They did not care about the physical and psychological costs to him. That contributed to his addiction … He came from great...

Logic and truth in economics To be ‘analytical’ and ‘logical’ is something most people find recommendable. These words have a positive connotation. Scientists think deeper than most other people because they use ‘logical’ and ‘analytical’ methods. In dictionaries, logic is often defined as “reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity” and ‘analysis’ as having to do with “breaking something down.” But that’s not the whole...

Pandemic depression antidote (XXV) [embedded content] [embedded content]

Sydsvenskan — grodors plums och ankors plask på ledarsidan I Sydsvenskans huvudledare kunde vi tidigare i år läsa följande: Gång på gång framhåller [73-punkts]överenskommelsen också att fokus ska ligga på kvalitet — inte driftsform — i den politiska styrningen av olika välfärdstjänster. Detta är givet ur liberalt perspektiv. Trots de brister som finns inom vissa verksamheter har avregleringarna på det hela taget gett medborgarna bättre service, utbud och...

 In practice, what math does is let macro-economists locate the FWUTVs [facts with unknown truth values] farther away from the discussion of identification … Relying on a micro-foundation lets an author say, “Assume A, assume B, …  blah blah blah … And so we have proven that P is true. Then the model is identified.” … Distributional assumptions about error terms are a good place to bury things because hardly anyone pays attention to them. Moreover, if a critic does see that...

Pandemic depression antidote (XXIV) .                                                                                                                           [embedded content]

Do RCTs in education really meet the ‘gold standard’? .                                                                                                                                  [embedded content] Heterogeneity and interaction is not only an external validity problem when trying to ‘export’ regression results to different times or different target populations. It is also often an internal problem to the millions of regression estimates that...

Econometrics in the 21st century .                                                                                                                                 [embedded content] If you don’t have time to listen to all of the presentations (a couple of them are actually quite uninformative) you should at least scroll forward to 1:39:25 and listen to what Angus Deaton has to say. As so often, he is spot on! As Deaton notes, evidence-based theories and...

Coronavirus and educational inequality .                                                                                                                                 [embedded content]

Friskolorna och den bristande likvärdigheten – Jag vet inte hur vi tänkte, men det blev fel med valfriheten i skolan. Det säger nu tidigare S-finansministern Kjell-Olof Feldt till SVT. – Problemet är likvärdigheten, menar Kjell-Ollof Feldt. De duktiga eleverna söker sig till samma skolor, det gör att de halvbra skolorna dräneras på bra elever, och dras ner till fler och fler problemskolor. Det måste dagens politiker våga sätta stopp för. Kjell Olof Feldt...