Lars P. Syll

NAIRU — a non-existent unicorn In our extended NAIRU model, labor productivity growth is included in the wage bargaining process … The logical consequence of this broadening of the theoretical canvas has been that the NAIRU becomes endogenous itself and ceases to be an attractor — Milton Friedman’s natural, stable and timeless equilibrium point from which the system cannot permanently deviate. In our model, a deviation from the initial equilibrium affects...

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P-value — a poor substitute for scientific reasoning [embedded content]All science entails human judgment, and using statistical models doesn’t relieve us of that necessity. Working with misspecified models, the scientific value of significance testing is actually zero — even though you’re making valid statistical inferences! Statistical models and concomitant significance tests are no substitutes for doing real science. In its standard form, a significance...

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 [embedded content]   Old loves never die …

When we cannot accept that the observations, along the time-series available to us, are independent, or cannot by some device be divided into groups that can be treated as independent, we get into much deeper water. For we have then, in strict logic, no more than one observation, all of the separate items having to be taken together. For the analysis of that the probability calculus is useless; it does not apply. We are left to use our judgement, making sense of what has...

Top 15 Economics Blog of The World Random Observations for Students of Economics This blog is run by Gregory Mankiw … Macro Musings Blog Run by David Beckworth, a senior research fellow at George Mason University … Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal Run by Miles Kimball, the Emeritus Professor Economics at Michigan University … Marginal Revolution  Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen, both professors of economics at George Mason University, run this blog …...

Soon after joining the Budget Committee, Kelton the deficit owl played a game with the staffers. She would first ask if they would wave a magic wand that had the power to eliminate the national debt. They all said yes. Then Kelton would ask, “Suppose that wand had the power to rid the world of US Treasuries. Would you wave it?” This question—even though it was equivalent to asking to wipe out the national debt—“drew puzzled looks, furrowed brows, and pensive expressions....

The rhetoric of imaginary populations The most expedient population and data generation model to adopt is one in which the population is regarded as a realization of an infinite super population. This setup is the standard perspective in mathematical statistics, in which random variables are assumed to exist with fixed moments for an uncountable and unspecified universe of events … This perspective is tantamount to assuming a population machine that spawns...

Till det som är tabubelagt i Sverige hör att säga att statens pengar kommer från staten. När finanspolitiken nu expanderar under pandemin har man på ledarsidor kunnat läsa filosofiska resonemang om att de nya pengarna egentligen kommer från skattebetalarna, löntagarna eller företagen. Nationalekonomen John Hassler skrev i Expressen (8 maj) att staten finansierar sina krispaket genom att låna av oss medborgare. Att nämna det uppenbara – att det är nya pengar det handlar om,...