Lars P. Syll

    In loving memory of Bengt Nilsson — a friend non plus ultra.

A couple of years ago, Chicago economics überpriest Thomas Sargent gave a graduation speech at UC Berkeley, giving the grads “a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches”: 1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible. 2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs. 3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do. 4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That...

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Go your own way  [embedded content] I just loved this song when I first heard it forty years ago. I still do.

Varför ekonomer har så stort inflytande  [embedded content]

Unpacking the ‘Nobel prize’ in economics In a 2017 speech, Duflo famously likened economists to plumbers. In her view the role of an economist is to solve real world problems in specific situations. This is a dangerous assertion, as it suggests that the “plumbing” the randomistas are doing is purely technical, and not guided by theory or values. However, the randomistas’ approach to economics is not objective, value-neutral, nor pragmatic, but rather,...

Economists do not understand the economy  [embedded content]

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!  [embedded content] In the postwar period, it has become increasingly clear that economic growth has not only brought greater prosperity. The other side of growth, in the form of pollution, contamination, wastage of resources, and climate change, has emerged as perhaps the greatest challenge of our time. Against the mainstream theory’s view on the economy as a balanced and harmonious system, where...

A truly distinguished economist who knows what he is talking about  [embedded content]

‘Nobel prize’ winners Duflo and Banerjee do not tackle the real root causes of poverty Some go so far as to insist that development interventions should be subjected to the same kind of randomised control trials used in medicine, with “treatment” groups assessed against control groups. Such trials are being rolled out to evaluate the impact of a wide variety of projects – everything from water purification tablets to microcredit schemes, financial literacy...