Lars P. Syll

Trots det lever jag utan förtvivlan Om den värld jag tillhör har jag inte något hopp. Undergången är inbyggd i systemet, ty vart varningsrop blir strax förlöjligat och därmed oskadliggjort. Trots det lever jag utan förtvivlan. Det tillhör den enskildes villkor att leva vid katastrofens rand. Vägen fram till döden ter sig lika lång, var man än befinner sig i livet. Så är det också med mänsklighetens tillvaro. Jag uppfattar den vemodsfyllda blick varmed unga...

The pretense-of-knowledge syndrome in economics What does concern me about my discipline … is that its current core — by which I mainly mean the so-called dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach — has become so mesmerized with its own internal logic that it has begun to confuse the precision it has achieved about its own world with the precision that it has about the real one … While it often makes sense to assume rational expectations for a limited...

Esther Duflo vs Elinor Ostrom While both authors subscribe to realism, they practise two types of realism. The realism supported by Duflo is akin to a naive ‘metrological realism’ … in which quantification is seen as merely mirroring reality within a margin of error, whereas Ostrom seems closer to critical realism and constructivism: the way we perceive and quantify reality is moulded by our cognitive maps and conventions. The rationales of the social...

Inequality and the future of captalism  [embedded content]

  Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative MP and Leader of the House of Commons, slouched during a three-hour late-night debate on Brexit yesterday …

A guide to econometrics 1. Thou shalt use common sense and economic theory. 2. Thou shalt ask the right question. 3. Thou shalt know the context. 4. Thou shalt inspect the data. 5. Thou shalt not worship complexity. 6. Thou shalt look long and hard at thy results. 7. Thou shalt beware the costs of data mining. 8. Thou shalt be willing to compromise. 9. Thou shalt not confuse statistical significance with substance. 10. Thou shalt confess in the presence of...

This is the way  [embedded content]

Summers and Stansbury only get it half right The new Keynesian school emerged from the synthesis, propelled by the invention of a slew of frictions and rigidities – staggered contract negotiations perturbing labor markets, “menu costs” of changing prices and wages, prices locked into inefficient levels by contracts, probabilistic price revision, monopsony power of firms in labor markets, on and on. In the process, any and all discussion of effective demand...

Les banquiers centraux sont les pompiers pyromanes Pour la première fois depuis l’après-guerre, les banquiers centraux sont confrontés à un problème contre lequel ils sont impuissants, le chaos politique. Les Etats-Unis étaient un acteur fiable, dont la devise était le pilier du système monétaire international ? Ils sont devenus imprévisibles, tandis que le rôle pivot du billet vert est remis en cause … Ce n’est pas tout. En maintenant des taux très bas...

On the irrelevance of economics I believe that as an economic theorist, I have very little to say about the real world and that there are very few models in economic theory that can be used to provide serious advice. However, economic theory has real effects. I cannot ignore the fact that our work as teachers and researchers influences students’ minds and does so in a way with which I am not comfortable. Can we find a way to be relevant without being...