Lars P. Syll

Chicago economics — only for Gods and Idiots If I ask myself what I could legitimately assume a person to have rational expectations about, the technical answer would be, I think, about the realization of a stationary stochastic process, such as the outcome of the toss of a coin or anything that can be modeled as the outcome of a random process that is stationary. I don’t think that the economic implications of the outbreak of World war II were regarded by...

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Economists saving the world …

Lagen om valfrihetssystem (LOV) — en nyliberal våtdröm De välvilliga etableringsreglerna i LOV och andra sammanhang har öppnat vägen för den ekonomiska brottsligheten. Skurkarna har brett ut sig, lycksökarna har lekt lotsar inom arbetsmarknadspolitiken, men varken skolan eller sjukvården har gått fri från svindlare. Och vart tog kvaliteten vägen, den som skulle ursäkta allt det andra? Grundfelet i LOV-ideologin är att den utgår från att kvaliteten skulle...

 [embedded content] Avec le temps, va, tout s’en va Et l’on se sent blanchi comme un cheval fourbu Et l’on se sent glacé dans un lit de hasard Et l’on se sent tout seul peut-être mais peinard Et l’on se sent floué par les années perdues, alors vraiment Avec le temps on n’aime plus

Economics — too important to be left to economists Bad economics underpinned the grand giveaways to the rich and the squeezing of welfare programs, sold the idea that the state is impotent and corrupt and the poor are lazy, and paved the way to the current stalemate of exploding inequality and angry inertia. Blinkered economics told us trade is good for everyone, and faster growth is everywhere. Blind economics missed the explosion in inequality all over...

Does it — really — take a model to beat a model? A critique yours truly sometimes encounters is that as long as I cannot come up with some own alternative model to the failing mainstream models, I shouldn’t expect people to pay attention. This is, however, to totally and utterly misunderstand the role of philosophy and methodology of economics! As John Locke wrote in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: The Commonwealth of Learning is not at this time...

Why all the fuzz about trade? The share of US expenditure on imports is smaller than in most other countries. To a large extent, this reflects the fact that for a large country like the United States, a significant fraction of trade occurs intra- rather than internationally. This basic observation implies that that the welfare gains from international trade in the United States are smaller than in most other countries. Although magnitudes vary greatly...

Is economics — really — predictable? As Oskar Morgenstern noted already back in his 1928 classic Wirtschaftsprognose: Eine Untersuchung ihrer Voraussetzungen und Möglichkeiten, economic predictions and forecasts amount to little more than intelligent guessing. Making forecasts and predictions obviously isn’t a trivial or costless activity, so why then go on with it? The problems that economists encounter when trying to predict the future really underlines...

Charles Taylor über die Suche nach der perfekten Gemeinschaft  [embedded content]