Lars P. Syll

RCTs and the limits of evidence-based policies There is something paradoxical about Michael Gove’s recent speech calling for government to be “rigorous and fearless in its evaluation of policy and projects.” It’s that his praise for evidence-based policy has come in a year when we’ve seen that policy should sometimes not be based on rigorous evidence … It’s sometimes hard to extrapolate the results of the RCTs lauded by Gove. They “prove”, for example, that...

 [embedded content] Think of all the hate there is in Red China! Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama! Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space But when your return, it’s the same old place

 [embedded content] Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem mean

Pandemic depression antidote (XX)  [embedded content] Still makes me as happy as when I first heard it on the radio back in 1966!

I stället för att använda den möjlighet som Coronakrisen inneburit att göra rent hus med nyliberalismens falska berättelser, har den socialdemokratiska partiledningen valt att försvara den ekonomiska politik som förts sedan 1990-talet … Trots att nästan alla länder vi brukar jämföra oss med har kunnat göra lika stora eller betydligt större finanspolitiska satsningar i krisen, talas här i landet om att det skulle vara tack vare “ansvarsfull” sparpolitik förut som vi nu kan...

The alleged success of econometrics Econometricians typically hail the evolution of econometrics as a “big success”. For example, Geweke et al. (2006) argue that “econometrics has come a long way over a relatively short period” … Pagan (1987) describes econometrics as “outstanding success” because the work of econometric theorists has become “part of the process of economic investigation and the training of economists” … These claims represent no more than...

The concept of dynamics The concept of dynamics, which complements bourgeois “ahistoricity,” is raised to something absolute, while it nevertheless, as the anthropological reflex of the laws of production, must be critically confronted in the emancipated society with need. The idea of unfettered doing, of uninterrupted creating, of chubby-cheeked insatiability, of freedom as intense activity, feeds on the bourgeois concept of nature, which from time...

Central banks and fiscal policies Suppose a UK government became extremely irresponsible, and enacted large tax cuts during an economic boom. The Bank would, following its remit, attempt to put the lid on inflationary pressure by raising interest rates. Suppose further that the markets panicked, and refused to buy UK government debt except at ridiculously high interest rates. In that situation I think it is extremely unlikely that the Bank would intervene...

 [embedded content] Bille August’s and Ingmar Bergman’s marvellous​ masterpiece. With breathtakingly beautiful music by Stefan Nilsson.

Mainstream macroeconomics — rigorously irrelevant There is something about the way macroeconomists construct their models nowadays that obviously doesn’t sit right. One might have hoped that humbled by the manifest failure of its theoretical pretenses during the latest economic-financial crises, the one-sided, almost religious, insistence on axiomatic-deductivist modeling as the only scientific activity worthy of pursuing in economics would give way to...