Lars P. Syll

    Sven Barthel & Roland Svensson, “Skärgård” (Bonniers, 1952).

Friskolorna — socialdemokratins största svek någonsin Att vi har skolor som Vetenskapsskolan och att skolor som Thorén Innovation School kan fortsätta sin verksamhet trots massiv kritik från Skolinspektionen är inte att förundras över. Det är ett resultat av att det ses som en rättighet snarare än ett privilegium att driva skolor och att beröva någon en rättighet är ingen enkel juridisk process. Eftersom detta synsätt förefaller djupt förankrat så lär den...

How the model became the message in economics In The World in the Model Mary Morgan gives a historical account of how the model became the message in economics. On the question of how the models provide a method of enquiry where they can function both as “objects to enquire into” and as “objects to enquire with”, Morgan argues that model reasoning involves a kind of experiment. She writes: It may help to clarify my account of modelling as a double method...

Pandemic depression antidote (XIII)  [embedded content]

Sweden’s coronavirus strategy will soon be the world’s [embedded content] Interesting interview, but unfortunately neither Prescott nor professor Lobelo have got the fact that Sweden’s strategy is NOT a herd immunity strategy, but an approach directed at keeping our health-care system working without having to ENFORCE social distancing on the population.

The representative agent — a theoretical cul-de-sac Rigorous macroeconomics must therefore ground its analysis in individual behavior, recognize that only a few key variables carry over to the aggregate level, and generally posit distinct functional forms at the macro level. Keynes and Kalecki are eminent examples of this. Keynes builds his analysis of aggregate consumption on personal income and a variety of subjective and objective factors that influence...

WHO slams herd immunity concept [embedded content] And: Sweden’s strategy is NOT a herd immunity strategy. It is rather an approach directed at keeping our health-care system working without having to ENFORCE social distancing on the population. Herd immunity is an interesting ‘thought experiment,’ but should also not be treated as anything else. As with most economics models, epidemiological models building on (as yet) unsubstantiated assumptions should be...

So your models are nothing but fiction? Count me out! I have spent a considerable part of my life building economic models, and examining the models that other economists have built. I believe that I am making reasonably good use of my talents in an attempt to understand the social world.I have no fellow-feeling with those economic theorists who, off the record at seminars and conferences, admit that they are only playing a game with other theorists. If...

With a few notable exceptions, such as the planetary systems, our most beautiful and exact applications of the laws of physics are all within the entirely artificial and precisely constrained environment of the modern laboratory … Haavelmo remarks that physicists are very clever. They confine their predictions to the outcomes of their experiments. They do not try to predict the course of a rock in the mountains and trace the development of the avalanche. It is only the crazy...

John von Neumann on mathematics