Lars P. Syll

Gary Becker’s big mistake The econometrician Henri Theil once said “models are to be used but not to be believed.” I use the rational actor model for thinking about marginal changes but Gary Becker really believed the model. Once, at a dinner with Becker, I remarked that extreme punishment could lead to so much poverty and hatred that it could create blowback. Becker was having none of it. For every example that I raised of blowback, he responded with a...

Spirit in the sky  [embedded content] Marcel Proust hade sin Madeleinekaka. Jag har musiken. Den här låten är för mig alltid förknippad med sommarminnen på 70-talet från Hästveda och Luhrsjön, där jag och bästa kompisen Johan brukade spela flipper vid strandcaféet och den här låten gick varm på jukeboxen. Oförglömliga minnen som fortfarande värmer i dessa coronaisoleringens och det sociala distanserandes tider …

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Pandemic depression antidote (X)  [embedded content]

Coronavirus case in France already in December  [embedded content]

Högre utbildning – funktionell dumhet eller kvalificering?  [embedded content]

We’re all going to be infected Everyone will be exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and most people will become infected. COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in all countries, but we do not see it—it almost always spreads from younger people with no or weak symptoms to other people who will also have mild symptoms. This is the real pandemic, but it goes on beneath the surface, and is probably at its peak now in many European...

How to get published in ‘top’ economics journals If you think that your paper is vacuous, Use the first-order functional calculus. It then becomes logic, And, as if by magic, The obvious is hailed as miraculous. Paul Halmos

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