Lars P. Syll

Minimal realism — much ado about nothing To generalise Mäki’s distinction between realism and realisticness, someone who believes that economic theories must or should include unrealistic assumptions is not necessarily a non-realist in the broader sense of philosophical realism: “A realist economist is permitted, indeed required, to use unrealistic assumptions in order to isolate what are believed to be the most essential features in a complex situation …...

[embedded content] Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. To simply assume that economic processes are ergodic and concentrate on ensemble averages — and hence in any relevant sense timeless — is not a sensible way for dealing with the kind of genuine uncertainty that permeates real-world economies. Ergodicity and the all-important difference between time averages and ensemble averages are difficult concepts — so let me try to explain the meaning of these...

Game theorists — people carried away by fictions Applied game theory is a theory of real-world facts, where we use game theoretical definitions, axioms, theorems and (try to) test if real-world phenomena ‘satisfy’ the axioms and the inferences made from them. When confronted with the real world we can (hopefully) judge if game theory really tells us if things are as postulated by theory. But there is also an influential group of game theoreticians that...

Das Leben der Anderen Die Gezi-Proteste, an denen sich 2013 einige Millionen beteiligt hatten, fielen der Regierung nun wieder ein, als sie vor den Wahlen plötzlich einen Feind brauchte. 16 Oppositionelle, auch ich, stehen nun vor Gericht, lebenslang sollen wir in Haft … An der Spitze der Anklage steht Erdoğan … Der Hauptangeklagte ist der Unternehmer und NGO-Pionier Osman Kavala. Auf der Rückreise von einem gemeinsamen Projekt mit dem Goethe-Institut wurde...

Living On My Own  [embedded content] [Film clip from the short film Lila]

What can we learn from economic models? Some economic methodologists have lately been arguing that economic models may well be considered ‘minimal models’ that portray ‘credible worlds’ without having to care about things like similarity, isomorphism, simplified representationality or resemblance to the real world. These models are said to resemble ‘realistic novels’ that portray ‘possible worlds’. And sure: economists constructing and working with that...

Om vådan av att läsa nationalekonomi För egen del … måste jag läsa lika nödvändigt som jag måste andas, och jag kan numera läsa så gott som allt som är någorlunda mänskligt skrivet och har innehåll … Men bestämda undantag finnas, som jag aldrig kommer att kunna bemästra; liksom vissa människor med god aptit bli sjuka vid tanken på ål eller må illa av musslor. Jag kan inte läsa juridik; inte heller nationalekonomi … Försöker jag mig på den sortens ting,...

The explanation paradox in economics Hotelling’s model, then, is false in all relevant senses … And yet, it is considered explanatory. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, it feels explanatory. If we have not thought much about Hotelling’s kind of cases, it seems that we have genuinely learned something. We begin to see Hotelling situations all over the place. Why do electronics shops in London concentrate in Tottenham Court Road and music shops in...

The logic of economic models Analogue-economy models may picture Galilean thought experiments or they may describe credible worlds. In either case we have a problem in taking lessons from the model to the world. The problem is the venerable one of unrealistic assumptions, exacerbated in economics by the fact that the paucity of economic principles with serious empirical content makes it difficult to do without detailed structural assumptions. But the worry...

Vad min kropp behöver  [embedded content]