Lars P. Syll

Economic models and reality The abandonment of efforts to match real structures has led to disaster, as models of economic theory have grown progressively distant from reality. Attempts to fix the problem have failed to address the cause. Economists look at bad models, and say we should replace these by better models. But the process by which models are evaluated, the underlying methodology, is not examined. The real problem lies much deeper than bad models...

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Pandemic depression antidote (XIV)  [embedded content]  [embedded content]

Adam Smith and the other side of the invisible hand How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively...

Vågade någon tala om för dig att du gjort ett dåligt arbete eller inte ansträngt dig nog? Fick du för dåliga betyg? Höll inte uppsatsen måttet? Det gör inget! För nu för tiden kan alla slö, slappa, lata och likgiltiga komma undan det egna ansvaret med tidens egen deus ex machina — de är kränkta. Simsalabim och problemet är inte längre deras utan den som hade fräckheten att våga påtala bristerna och undermåligheten. För mig är detta en källa till ständig irritation. Varför? Jo...

Rational choice theory — an abysmal failure Though an enthusiast of reason, I believe that rational choice theory has failed abysmally, and it saddens me that this failure has brought discredit upon the very enterprise of serious theorizing in the field of social study … Rational choice theory is far too ambitious. In fact, it claims to explain everything social in terms of just three assumptions that would hold for all individuals in all social groups and...

Republicans need to get their sh*t together [embedded content] That’s the right spirit!

Sacrificing realism at the altar of mathematical purity Economists are too detached from the real world and have failed to learn from the financial crisis, insisting on using mathematical models which do not reflect reality, according to the Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane. The public has lost faith in economists since the credit crunch, he said, but the profession has failed to thoroughly re-examine its failings to come up with a new model...

In the long run … … not everything is dead. My Tell wristwatch from 1929 is still running perfectly.  

Econometrics — a Keynesian perspective It will be remembered that the seventy translators of the Septuagint were shut up in seventy separate rooms with the Hebrew text and brought out with them, when they emerged, seventy identical translations. Would the same miracle be vouchsafed if seventy multiple correlators were shut up with the same statistical material? And anyhow, I suppose, if each had a different economist perched on his a priori, that would make...