Lars P. Syll

Zürich — das große Schweigen Selbst sprachlich steht man in Zürich auf slim fit. Das Vokabular ist reduziert und höchstens mit ein paar Anglizismen gestreckt. Geschichten wird man keine hören. Weil sie niemand erzählen kann. Es wird zwar geredet, aber ohne Pointe, ohne doppelten Boden, ohne Dramaturgie: nüchterner Informationsaustausch. Alles andere ist für die Zürcher nur dekadenter Firlefanz, manchmal sogar das Sprechen selbst. Also wird gern und häufig...

Wie du immer Recht behältst …  [embedded content]

The question no one dares to ask …  [embedded content] [h/t Danne Mikula]

Can governments ever run out of money? Whether it’s more nurses, frozen tax promises, free broadband internet or more social housing in the UK; or tax cuts and green energy investments in America, public spending is set to surge. This sudden abandonment of fiscal rectitude comes amid the rise in prominence of a way of thinking about money, spending and the economy – Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). According to its key architect, US businessman Warren Mosler,...

 [embedded content] If I may be allowed to appropriate the term speculation for the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market, and the term enterprise for the activity of forecasting the prospective yield of assets over their whole life, it is by no means always the case that speculation predominates over enterprise. As the organisation of investment markets improves, the risk of the predominance of speculation does, however, increase. Speculators may do no harm as...

Comment le système éducatif français aggrave les inégalités sociales  [embedded content] Il est vraiment symptomatique de ce système éducatif en pleine tourmente, que en France, seulement 9% des jeunes de 15 ans font la différence entre un fait et une opinion …

Modell och verklighet i ekonomisk teori Ofta är tanken hos mainstreamekonomer att modeller och teorier genom »successiva approximationer« ska närma sig »sanningen« genom att inkorporera fler och fler faktorer och genom att släppa efter på de idealiserande antagandena. Detta användande av »isolering« och »successiva approximationer« som ett slags heuristisk metod är inte övertygande. För att metoden ska fungera väl krävs både att de faktorer man studerar i...

Perhaps the most striking application of hyper-rationality occurs in Analytical Marxism, whose doctrines were outlined clearly and concisely by its leading philosopher Gerald Cohen … It is an anti-dialectical and anti-holistic attempt to ground Marxist notions in neoclassical methodology. It “believes that [neoclassical] economics is essentially sound” and consequently relies on rational choice theory, game theory, and associated neoclassical mathematical techniques to derive...

Public trust in economists People are obviously not so impressed by the “queen of the social sciences”. And rightly so. Mainstream economics today is more like an ideological-religious conviction than a realist and relevant social science that people can trust for making their lifes or societies better.

HARDtalk with Esther Duflo [embedded content] This year’s ‘Nobel prize’ winners think that economics should be based on evidence from randomised experiments and field studies. Duflo et consortes want to give up on ‘big ideas’ like political economy and institutional reform and instead go for solving more manageable problems the way plumbers do. Yours truly is far from sure that is the right way to move economics forward and make it a relevant and realist...