Lars P. Syll

Econometrics — fictions of extremely limited value It is often said that the error term in a regression equation represents the effect of the variables that were omitted from the equation. This is unsatisfactory … There is no easy way out of the difficulty. The conventional interpretation for error terms needs to be reconsidered. At a minimum, something like this would need to be said: The error term represents the combined effect of the omitted variables,...

The origins of MMT Many mainstream economists seem to think the idea behind Modern Monetary Theory is new and originates from economic cranks. New? Cranks? How about reading one of the great founders of neoclassical economics – Knut Wicksell. This is what Wicksell wrote in 1898 on ‘pure credit systems’ in Interest and Prices (Geldzins und Güterpreise), 1936 (1898), p. 68f: It is possible to go even further. There is no real need for any money at all if a...

But once, we were here  [embedded content]

Dance me to the end of love  [embedded content]

Economists — a perniciously overconfident tribe We economists trudge relentlessly toward Asymptopia, where data are unlimited and estimates are consistent, where the laws of large numbers apply perfectly and where the full intricacies of the economy are completely revealed … Worst of all, when we feel pumped up with our progress, a tectonic shift can occur, like the Panic of 2008, making it seem as though our long journey has left us disappointingly close...

‘Nobel prize’ winning plumbers There is no reason to believe, as the political economy view would have it, that politics always trumps policies. We can now go one step further and invert the hierarchy between policies and politics … The focus on the broad INSTITUTIONS as a necessary and sufficient condition for anything good to happen is somewhat misplaced … There is considerable slack to improve institutions and policy at the margin … These changes will...

Sind so kleine Hände  [embedded content] Grade, klare Menschen wär’n ein schönes Ziel. Leute ohne Rückgrat hab’n wir schon zuviel.

 [embedded content] Kultur, identitet, etnicitet, genus, religiositet får aldrig accepteras som grund för intolerans i politiska och medborgerliga hänseenden. I ett modernt demokratiskt samhälle måste människor kunna räkna med att samhället också skyddar dem mot intoleransens övergrepp. Alla medborgare måste ha friheten och rätten att också ifrågasätta och lämna den egna gruppen. Mot dem som inte accepterar den toleransen måste vi vara intoleranta. I Sverige har vi länge...

 [embedded content]

Whereas the Great Depression of the 1930s produced Keynesian economics, and the stagflation of the 1970s produced Milton Friedman’s monetarism, the Great Recession has produced no similar intellectual shift. This is deeply depressing to young students of economics, who hoped for a suitably challenging response from the profession. Why has there been none? Krugman’s answer is typically ingenious: the old macroeconomics was, as the saying goes, “good enough for government work”...