Lars P. Syll

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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A whiter shade of pale  [embedded content]

Guest appearances in Denmark and Germany. Regular blogging will be resumed next week.

The pitfalls of econometrics Ed Leamer’s Tantalus on the Road to Asymptopia is one of my favourite critiques of econometrics, and for the benefit of those who are not versed in the econometric jargon, this handy summary gives the gist of it in plain English: Most work in econometrics and regression analysis is made on the assumption that the researcher has a theoretical model that is ‘true.’ Based on this belief of having a correct specification for an...

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Paul Krugman — finally — admits he was wrong! Paul Krugman has never suffered fools gladly. The Nobel Prize-winning economist rose to international fame—and a coveted space on the New York Times op-ed page—by lacerating his intellectual opponents in the most withering way. In a series of books and articles beginning in the 1990s, Krugman branded just about everybody who questioned the rapid pace of globalization a fool who didn’t understand economics very...