Lars P. Syll

The Swedish for-profit ‘free’ school disaster Neo-liberals and libertarians have always provided a lot of ideologically founded ideas and ‘theories’ to underpin their Panglossian view on markets. But when they are tested against reality they usually turn out to be wrong. The promised results are simply not to be found. And that goes for for-profit private schools too. Sweden introduced a voucher-style reform in the 1990s and opened the market to for-profit...

Simone de Beauvoir — a pedophilia supporter? It has to be said that Beauvoir’s interest in these matters was not purely theoretical … She was dismissed from her teaching job in 1943 for “behavior leading to the corruption of a minor.” The minor in question was one of her pupils at a Paris lycée. It is well established that she and Jean-Paul Sartre developed a pattern, which they called the “trio,” in which Beauvoir would seduce her students and then pass...

The reaction of human beings to the truly unknown is fundamentally different from the way they deal with the risks associated with a known situation and environment … In realistic, real-time settings, both economic agents and researchers have a very limited understanding of the mechanisms at work … In trying to add a degree of complexity to the current core models, by bringing in aspects of the periphery, we are simultaneously making the rationality assumptions behind that...

Not accounting for uncertainty may result in severe confusion about what we do indeed understand about the economy. In the financial crisis of 2007/2008 the demon has lashed out at this ignorance and challenged the credibility of the whole economic community by laying bare economists’ incapability to prevent the crisis … Economics itself cannot be regarded a purely analytical science. It has the amazing and exciting property of shaping the object of its own analysis. This...

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Modell och verklighet i nationalekonomi Nationalekonomi är mer än någon annan samhällsvetenskap modellorienterad. Det finns många skäl till detta — ämnets historia, ideal hämtade från naturvetenskapen, universalitetsanpråk, viljan att förklara så mycket som möjligt med så lite som möjligt, rigör, precision med mera. Tillvägagångssättet är i grunden analytiskt — helheten bryts ned i sina beståndsdelar så att det blir möjligt att förklara (reducera)...

The intellectual regress of macroeconomics Real business cycle theory — RBC — is one of the theories that has put macroeconomics on a path of intellectual regress for three decades now. And although there are many kinds of useless ‘post-real’ economics held in high regard within mainstream economics establishment today, few — if any — are less deserved than real business cycle theory. The future is not reducible to a known set of prospects. It is not like...

Dokumentären som renar min själ (personal) I alla moderna människors liv behövs det tid för andhämtning och reflektion. Och ibland — när alla möjliga och omöjliga måsten och krav från omgivningen bara blir för många och högljudda — kan det vara skönt att dra sig undan lite grand och slå av på takten för en stund. Alla har vi väl olika sätt att göra det på. Själv brukar jag gå in på Öppet Arkiv och titta på Gubben i stugan — Nina Hedenius underbara...

On causality and econometrics The point is that a superficial analysis, which only looks at the numbers, without attempting to assess the underlying causal structures, cannot lead to a satisfactory data analysis … We must go out into the real world and look at the structural details of how events occur … The idea that the numbers by themselves can provide us with causal information is false. It is also false that a meaningful analysis of data can be done...