Lars P. Syll

Agent-based modelling in economics I DSGE sono i modelli più diffusi in accademia e nei dipartimenti di ricerca delle banche centrali. Anche prima della Grande Recessione, dovuta, secondo la vulgata, alle banche. Il modello è spesso rimproverato per non aver previsto la crisi, ma il problema è diverso. Come vedremo nel prossimo capitolo, e già si intuisce dal problema delle nonlinearità, la disciplina economica non può prevedere: il vero problema è che non...

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There really is something about the way macroeconomists construct their models nowadays that obviously doesn’t sit right. In mainstream economic theory models largely function as a substitute for empirical evidence. One might have hoped that humbled by the manifest failure of its theoretical pretences during the latest economic-financial crises, the one-sided, almost religious, insistence on axiomatic-deductivist modelling as the only scientific activity worthy of pursuing in...

P-hacking & HARKing — fragwürdige statistische Methoden .[embedded content]

Partiell integration med DI-metoden (student stuff) .[embedded content]

I The Book of Why för Judea Pearl fram flera tunga skäl till varför den numera så populära kausala grafteoretiska ansatsen är att föredra framför mer traditionella regressionsbaserade förklaringsmodeller. Ett av skälen är att kausala grafer är icke-parametriska och därför inte behöver anta exempelvis additivitet och/eller frånvaro av interaktionseffekter — pilar och noder ersätter regressionsanalysens nödvändiga specificeringar av funktionella relationer mellan de i...

The problem of reductionism in economics The kinds of laws and relations that economics has established, are laws and relations about entities in models that presuppose causal mechanisms being atomistic and additive. When causal mechanisms operate in the real world they only do it in ever-changing and unstable combinations where the whole is more than a mechanical sum of parts. If economic regularities obtain they do it (as a rule) only because we...

The permanent income hypothesis Almost all mainstream macroeconomic theories are based on Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis (PIH). It is mostly used in formulating the consumption Euler equations that make up a vital part of ‘modern’ New Classical and ‘New Keynesian’ macro models. So, what’s the problem with PIH? Well, only that empirical evidence have — again and again — falsified it! One implication of PIH is that current consumption is...

When I read in the 70s the publications of Sonnenschein, Mantel and Debreu I was deeply concerned. Up to thetime I had the naive illusion that the microeconomic foundation of the GE model, which I had admired so much,does not only allow us to prove that the model and the concept of equilibrium are logically consistent (thatequilibrium exists), but also allow us to show that the equilibrium is well determined (unique and stable). Thisillusion, or should I rather say, this...

[embedded content] Filmer kan beröra oss på många olika sätt. Många är mest inget annat än rent tidsfördriv och eskapism. Men det finns också några — få — filmer som verkligen betyder något. De riktigt stora filmerna. De som på allvar tränger in under huden och skakar om oss i vårt innersta. Kjell-Åke Anderssons filmatisering av Göran Tunströms mästerverk Juloratoriet — med gudabenådad musik av Stefan Nilsson — är en sådan film. En av de sorgligaste och nästintill outhärdligt...