Lars P. Syll

In praise of pluralism Recognition of the speculative value of counterfactualizing provides the grounding for a defense of theoretical pluralism in economics. The existence of multiple contending theories in economics is inconvenient, of course. It casts doubt on the truth content of the counterfactual scenarios generated by the predominant approach and challenges the predominant causal claims … But that is precisely the virtue of contending theoretical...

Friskolor — en nationell säkerhetsrisk Utöver AcadeMedia ägs tre större utbildningskoncerner av utländska aktörer. Internationella Engelska Skolans huvudägare är registrerad i Luxemburg, skol- och förskolekoncernen Dibber ägs av det norska bolaget Laeringsverkstaedet som i sig ägs av ett norskt par boende i Schweiz, och förskolekoncernen Norlandia ägs av det norska investmentbolaget Hospitality Invest. Det här är aktörer som alla har intresse av att...

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Post-real economics — a severe case of mathiness In practice, what math does is let macro-economists locate the FWUTVs [facts with unknown truth values] farther away from the discussion of identification … Relying on a micro-foundation lets an author say, “Assume A, assume B, … blah blah blah … And so we have proven that P is true. Then the model is identified.” … Distributional assumptions about error terms are a good place to bury things because hardly...

Perché la trasformazione del capitalismo è necessaria Il capitalismo è un sistema economico affermatosi negli ultimi due secoli e mezzo in questa parte del mondo. Un sistema che per consolidarsi ha plasmato la società e la politica, creando un ordine sociale. Il ruolo principale dell’economia teorica dominante (mainstream) è stato quello di fornire un’apologia di un ordinamento sociale spacciato per naturale, ma che è stato in grado di generare crisi...

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The Larry Summers Problem Economists too often deceive themselves and their audiences into believing they know more than it is possible to know. As keepers of this Secret Knowledge, economists are rewarded in compensation, prestige, and influence for their expertise. At a 1991 speech at a World Bank-International Monetary Fund meeting, the famed Larry Summers told an audience, “The laws of economics, it’s often forgotten, are like the laws of engineering …...

DSGE models — worse than useless The unsellability of DSGE models — private-sector firms do not pay lots of money to use DSGE models — is one strong argument against DSGE. But it is not the most damning critique of it. The most damning critiques that can be levelled against DSGE models are the following two: (1) DSGE models are unable to explain involuntary unemployment In the basic DSGE models the labour market is always cleared – responding to a changing...

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DSGE models — a total waste of time While one can understand that some of the elements in DSGE models seem to appeal to Keynesians at first sight, after closer examination, these models are in fundamental contradiction to Post-Keynesian and even traditional Keynesian thinking. The DSGE model is a model in which output is determined in the labour market as in New Classical models and in which aggregate demand plays only a very secondary role, even in the...