Lars P. Syll

The Coase Theorem at 60 Steven Medema — who knows more about the theories of Ronald Coase than any other economist yours truly is familiar with — has written an incisive and learned article about the history of the Coase theorem —  The Coase Theorem at Sixty — in the latest issue of Journal of Economic Literature. Medema concludes : The Coase theorem is, by any number of measures, one of the most curious results in the history of economic ideas. Its...

Why everything we know about modern economics is wrong The proposition is about as outlandish as it sounds: Everything we know about modern economics is wrong. And the man who says he can prove it doesn’t have a degree in economics. But Ole Peters is no ordinary crank. A physicist by training, his theory draws on research done in close collaboration with the late Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann, father of the quark … His beef is that all too often, economic...

What can RCTs tell us? We seek to promote an approach to RCTs that is tentative in its claims and that avoids simplistic generalisations about causality and replaces these with more nuanced and grounded accounts that acknowledge uncertainty, plausibility and statistical probability … Whilst promoting the use of RCTs in education we also need to be acutely aware of their limitations … Whilst the strength of an RCT rests on strong internal validity, the...

Fuzzy RDD & IV (student stuff) .[embedded content]

The elite school illusion  [embedded content] A great set of lectures — but yours truly still warns his students that regression-based averages is something we have reasons to be cautious about. Suppose we want to estimate the average causal effect of a dummy variable (T) on an observed outcome variable (O). In a usual regression context one would apply an ordinary least squares estimator (OLS) in trying to get an unbiased and consistent estimate:...

COVID19 and causal inference (wonkish) .[embedded content]

MMT perspectives on rising interest rates The Bank of England is today wholly-owned by the UK government, and no other body is allowed to create UK pounds. It can create digital pounds in the payments system that it runs, thus marking up and down the accounts of banks, the government and other public institutions. It also acts as the bank of the government, facilitating its payments. The Bank of England also determines the bank rate, which is the interest...

Comment juguler la pandémie Les Etats-Unis, le Royaume-Uni et les pays européens dans leur ensemble … continuent d’être confrontés aux résurgences répétées d’une circulation virale en croissance exponentielle. Ils peuvent parvenir à juguler la pandémie en suivant l’exemple des pays qui ont réussi à le faire. Mais pour les citoyens, attendre une réponse officielle déjà trop retardée serait un jeu de dupes. N’attendez pas que vos gouvernements agissent....

Yours truly knows nine (and decently speaks four) languages, but this guy actually speaks seven languages. Impressive! [embedded content]