Lars P. Syll

MMT — neither modern, nor monetary Voltaire once said of the Holy Roman Empire that it was “Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”. Something similar might be said of Modern Monetary Theory … It is neither modern, nor genuinely monetary, and it is at least as much a set of policy proposals as a theory. It might be thought that “modern” refers to the fiat money world in which we have lived since major currencies broke with gold convertibility in the 1930s …...

Pandemic depression antidote (XVII)  [embedded content] The greatest movie soundtrack of all time.

The limits of game theory If you read Binmore’s Essays on the foundations of game theory (1990) you will find a section where he says that, unfortunately, we get into a kind of impasse. We get this infinite regress linked to the common knowledge problem. For example, I drive frequently from Aix to Marseille. You have the autoroute and parallel to it is the route nationale. Say there is, one day, congestion on the autoroute and nobody on the nationale. I...

 [embedded content]

New German study shows kids with corona may be as infectious as adults Combined data from both PCR instruments show that viral loads of at least 250,000 copies, a threshold we previously established for the isolation of infectious virus in cell culture at more than 5% probability, were present across the study period in 29.0% of kindergarten-aged patients 0-6 years old (n=38), 37.3% of those aged 0-19 (n=150), and in 51.4% of those aged 20 and above...

USA — der Zusammenbruch einer Gesellschaft Christina M. Greer ist Professorin für Politikwissenschaft und Amerikastudien an der Fordham University in New York. Sie lehrt und forscht unter anderem zu Wählergruppen, Stadtsoziologie sowie Wahlen und ist Autorin mehrerer Bücher über schwarze Wähler … ZEIT ONLINE: Apropos Signal: In der Berichterstattung über die Proteste scheint das Bild der gewalttätigen Randalierer, die Scheiben einwerfen und Gebäude...

 [embedded content] A great video, but — there’s always a but — unfortunately also not without some analytical shortcomings. The point of making a randomized experiment is often said to be that it ‘ensures’ that any correlation between a supposed cause and effect indicates a causal relation. This is believed to hold since randomization (allegedly) ensures that a supposed causal variable does not correlate with other variables that may influence the effect. The problem with...

 [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 episka mästerverk Juloratoriet — med gudabenådad musik av Stefan Nilsson — är en sådan film. Med starka beröringspunkter till mitt...

 [embedded content] Roma fa sognare — come fa sognare questa bellissima canzone.

La storia siamo noi  [embedded content] Canzone poetica e profondamente autentica — e invecchia come un ottimo vino.