Lars P. Syll

Quinn Slobodian and the birth of neoliberalism  [embedded content] It is a measure of the success of this fascinating, innovative history that it forces the question: after Slobodian’s reinterpretation, where does the critique of neoliberalism stand? First and foremost, Slobodian has underlined the profound conservatism of the first generation of neoliberals and their fundamental hostility to democracy. What he has exposed, furthermore, is their deep...

On the impossibility of efficient markets In general the price system does not reveal all the information about “the true value” of the risky asset … The only way informed traders can earn a return on their activity of information gathering, is if they can use their information to take positions in the market which are “better” than the positions of uninformed traders. “Efficient Markets” theorists have claimed that “at any time prices fully reflect all...

Friday on my mind  [embedded content]

Dynamic and static interpretations of regression coefficients (wonkish) When econometric and statistical textbooks present simple (and multiple) regression analysis for cross-sectional data, they often do it with regressions like “regress test score (y) on study hours (x)” and get the result y = constant + slope coefficient*x + error term. When speaking of increases or decreases in x in these interpretations, we have to remember that it is a question of...

Why all RCTs are biased Randomised experiments require much more than just randomising an experiment to identify a treatment’s effectiveness. They involve many decisions and complex steps that bring their own assumptions and degree of bias before, during and after randomisation … Some researchers may respond, “are RCTs not still more credible than these other methods even if they may have biases?” For most questions we are interested in, RCTs cannot be more...

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