Lars P. Syll

Kristina Axén Olin — moderat skolpolitiker med diktaturfasoner Är detta verkligen seriöst menat?” undrade Moderaternas skolpolitiske talesperson Kristina Axén Olin i ett mejl till Malmö Universitet och Högskoleämbetet. Kursen hon hade reagerat på heter ”Skolmarknaden och dess konsekvenser för skola, samhälle och synen på utbildning” Tidningen Universitetsläraren var först med att berätta om det mejl som Kristina Axén Olin, utbildningspolitisk talesperson...

MMT perspective on Biden’s $1.9-trillion big spend MMT is about identifying the untapped potential in our economy, what we call our fiscal space … How we choose to utilize that fiscal space is a political matter … The point is that we run our economy like a six-foot-tall guy who wanders around perpetually hunched over in a house with eight-foot ceilings because someone convinced him that if he tries to stand up tall he’ll suffer a massive head trauma. For...

L’annonce d’un plan de soutien à l’économie américaine de 1900 milliards de dollars US (soit environ 9% du PIB, après 4% décidés en décembre) a soulevé une controverse sur le bon calibrage des plans d’urgence et de relance. Pour Larry Summers et Olivier Blanchard, pourtant fervents partisans des politiques budgétaires expansionnistes, ce programme est excessif car il représente entre 2 et 4 fois l’écart de production attendu pour 2021 : avec un multiplicateur unitaire, sa mise...

The absurd usage of words in economics In identifying the economic phenomena, certain primitive concepts and terms have to be used … However, because of the freedom with which the mind can move, it happens frequently that the relation with reality is lost, and that purely hypothetical notions are introduced. In addition, there is often a change in the meaning of words. Consider “competition”: the common sense meaning is one of struggle with others, of...

Keynes on models and economics Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world. It is compelled to be this, because, unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time … I also want to emphasise strongly the point about economics being a moral science. I mentioned before that it deals with...

Chicago economics — the triumph of empty formalism Vielleicht ist diese Grundperspektive der radikalen Trennung von Form und Gehalt hilfreich, einige zunächst überaus paradoxe Äußerungen von Lucas etwas zu erhellen. Erinnert man sich der Forderungen von Lucas, die Makroökonomik zwingend auf Basis der klassischen Postulate, die Lucas und Sargent (1978) als (a) „Markträumung“ und (b) „Eigennutz“ umrissen hatten, zu errichten, so erstaunt man doch...

Logistic regression (student stuff) .[embedded content] In the video below (in Swedish) yours truly shows how to perform a logit regression using Gretl.[embedded content]

.[embedded content] Quel chef d’oeuvre! Cette tellement triste, belle et émouvante chanson, touche le plus profond de mon âme.

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Models and laws in economics [embedded content] Great lecture on how to do — and not to do — economics, delivered by Robert Skidelsky.