Lars P. Syll

What’s the use of economic models? One can generally develop a theoretical model to produce any result within a wide range. Do you want a model that produces the result that banks should be 100% funded by deposits? Here is a set of assumptions and an argument that will give you that result. That such a model exists tells us very little … Being logically correct may earn a place for a theoretical model on the bookshelf, but when a theoretical model is taken...

MMT and the need for tax reforms The analytical steps taken in this contribution point to a potential tax reform agenda, which would achieve useful macroeconomic and social policy objectives. The thumbnail sketch we have provided is intended to provoke others to further consider how tax reforms can serve a dual macroeconomic and social policy purpose. For example, taxing capital gains at the same rates as in the 1980s and similar moves to restore...

Evidence-based theories and policies are highly valued nowadays. Randomization is supposed to control for bias from unknown confounders. The received opinion is that evidence based on randomized experiments, therefore, is the best. More and more economists have also lately come to advocate randomization as the principal method for ensuring being able to make valid causal inferences. Yours truly would, however, rather argue that randomization, just as econometrics, promises...

Stratégiques et vitales pour l’économie, les banques sont devenues, au fil des crises financières, l’un des secteurs les plus régulés au monde. Pourtant, malgré les règles et les contrôles, le secteur bancaire mondial reste poreux au blanchiment d’argent et peine à lutter contre la circulation de l’argent sale, selon les « FinCEN Files », la nouvelle enquête conduite par le Consortium international des journalistes d’investigation (ICIJ) avec le site d’information américain...

How to cope with inflation Less well worked out is a technique of dealing with the other responsibility of the creator of money – the responsibility for maintaining its value. The key points here are not in the direct supply of money, or even in the regulation of the level of spending. The key points are in the determination​ of wage rates​ and in​ the determination of rates of markup of selling prices over costs … Higher wages relatively to prices...

Expected utility theory — an ex-parrot If a friend of yours offered you a gamble on the toss of a coin where you could lose €100 or win €200, would you accept it? Many of us probably wouldn’t. But if you were offered to make one hundred such bets, you would probably be willing to accept it, since most of us see that the aggregated gamble of one hundred 50–50 lose €100/gain €200 bets has an expected return of €5000 (and making our probabilistic calculations...

Erik Syll In Memoriam (personal) . [embedded content] In loving memory of my father-in-law, Erik Syll, whose funeral took place yesterday at Skeda church, Sweden.

Why economic models do not explain Analogue-economy models may picture Galilean thought experiments or they may describe credible worlds. In either case we have a problem in taking lessons from the model to the world. The problem is the venerable one of unrealistic assumptions, exacerbated in economics by the fact that the paucity of economic principles with serious empirical content makes it difficult to do without detailed structural assumptions. But the...

The value of economics — a cost-benefit analysis Economists cannot simply dismiss as “absurd” or “impossible” the possibility that our profession has imposed total costs that exceed total benefits. And no, building a model which shows that it is logically possible for economists to make a positive net contribution is not going to make questions about our actual effect go away. Why don’t we just stipulate that economists are now so clever at building models...

Men kartläggning och analyser av detta slags släktbaserade nätverk som genom hot om våld och trakasserier ut­övar stor makt i invandrartäta förortsområden och genom detta allvarligt förhindrar integration lyser med sin frånvaro … I Sverige får man ha vilka värderingar man vill. Att omfatta och propagera för till exempel kommunistiska, islamistiska, kristna, reaktionära, feministiska, patriarkala och även totalitära värderingar ingår i de fri- och rättigheter som grundlagen...