Lars P. Syll

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. Thorstein Veblen

It’s not just p = 0.048 vs. p = 0.052 “[G]iven the realities of real-world research, it seems goofy to say that a result with, say, only a 4.8% probability of happening by chance is “significant,” while if the result had a 5.2% probability of happening by chance it is “not significant.” Uncertainty is a continuum, not a black-and-white difference” … My problem with the 0.048 vs. 0.052 thing is that it way, way, way understates the problem. Yes, there’s no...

Les entreprises baignent dans un océan de dettes Mercredi 4 septembre, l’entreprise la plus fortunée du monde, Apple, assise sur son trésor de 200 milliards de dollars (180 milliards d’euros), a jugé qu’il était temps d’emprunter un peu d’argent. Elle a émis pour sept milliards de dollars d’obligations, des titres de dettes, alors qu’elle ne sait manifestement pas quoi faire de son argent. Au total, les entreprises américaines ont émis, pendant cette seule...

Central bank independence — institutionalizing monetary handcuffs Imposing a hard target can bind the central bank, but the government must then act on failures to hit the target. Why would it if it is self-interested? If it does, that amounts to saying it is not selfish, which undermines the argument that independence is needed. The same argument can be used to deconstruct independence itself. Suppose independence is a solution to time inconsistency. Why...

When I present this argument … one or more scholars say, “But shouldn’t I control for everything I can in my regressions? If not, aren’t my coefficients biased due to excluded variables?” This argument is not as persuasive as it may seem initially. First of all, if what you are doing is misspecified already, then adding or excluding other variables has no tendency to make things consistently better or worse … The excluded variable argument only works if you are sure your...

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 …