Lars P. Syll

Robert Lucas coming out as a closet Keynesian In his Keynote Address to the 2003 History of Political Economy Conference, Nobel laureate Robert Lucas said: Well, I’m not here to tell people in this group about the history of monetary thought. I guess I’m here as a kind of witness from a vanished culture, the heyday of Keynesian economics. It’s like historians rushing to interview the last former slaves before they died, or the last of the people who...

Si j’essaie ici de le décrire, c’est afin de ne pas l’oublier Mais, bien sûr, nous qui comprenons la vie, nous nous moquons bien des numéros ! J’aurais aimé commencer cette histoire à la façon des contes de fées. J’aurais aimé dire: “Il était une fois un petit prince qui habitait une planète à peine plus grande que lui, et qui avait besoin d’un ami…” Pour ceux qui comprennent la vie, ça aurait eu l’air beaucoup plus vrai. Car je n’aime pas qu’on lise mon...

L’incroyable voyage de Shackleton In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your own understanding, having the ​courage to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is a capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s rights not to be humiliated or abused. Courage is to do...

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Paolo Conte – Via Con Me  [embedded content]

Where economics went wrong David Colander and Craig Freedman’s Where Economics Went Wrong is a provocative book designed to inspire economists to serious reflection on the nature of economics and how it is practiced. It is a book to that seeks to stimulate discussion about the current state of the discipline; it should be read by anyone who categorizes what they do as applied policy work. I agree with much – though not all – of what Colander and Freedman’s...

What do RCTs reveal about causality? The insight critique contested the proposition that RCTs had revealed significant new facts or provided new understanding of development processes … But closer inspection reveals that they most often merely provide a validation of common sense. Whereas at times randomization seemed to reveal something surprising … in other instances it simply told us what had been long expected … One such finding—that providing...

Les limites de la méthode Duflo Comme le note Martin Ravallion, «pour le J-PAL, les expérimentations randomisées ne sont pas simplement au summum du menu des méthodes autorisées, rien d’autre n’est au menu.» Il serait regrettable que le tsunami expérimental auquel on assiste aujourd’hui en économie du développement emporte avec lui des méthodes éprouvées en sciences sociales et fasse fi de décennies de travaux consacrées à ces questions, sous prétexte que...

Sourire — c’est pour les ploucs …  [embedded content]

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