Lars P. Syll

Standing up against fascists and neo-nazis A couple of years ago, neo-nazis and fascists were out marching on Swedish streets. Tess Asplund courageously showed us all how to confront that kind of people.

Could Italy save the euro? In a recent interview … Silvio Berlusconi mooted the introduction of a parallel domestic currency, the so-called mini-bills of Treasury (“mini-BOTs” for short), which would in theory allow Italy to exit austerity without exiting the eurozone. Italy’s Five Star/Lega coalition government has also embraced the idea. The ECB and the European Commission, predictably, oppose the mini-BOT’s introduction, seeing it as an existential...

Why attractive people you date tend​ to be jerks Have you ever noticed that, among the people you date, the attractive ones tend to be jerks? Instead of constructing elaborate psychosocial theories, consider a simpler explanation. Your choice of people to date depends on two factors, attractiveness and personality. You’ll take a chance on dating a mean attractive person or a nice unattractive person, and certainly a nice attractive person, but not a mean...

My philosophy of economics A critique yours truly sometimes encounters is that as long as I cannot come up with some own alternative to the failing mainstream theory, I shouldn’t expect people to pay attention. This is, however, to totally and utterly misunderstand the role of philosophy and methodology of economics! As John Locke wrote in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: The Commonwealth of Learning is not at this time without Master-Builders,...

Robert Lucas in praise of superficiality To observe that economics is based on a superficial view of individual and social behaviour does not seem to me to be much of an insight. I think it is exactly this superficiality that gives economics much of the power that it has. Its ability to predict human behaviour without knowing very much about the make up and lives of the people whose behaviour we are trying to understand. Robert Lucas

Mainstream economics — a case of explanatory disaster To achieve explanatory success, a theory should, minimally, satisfy two criteria: it should have determinate implications for behavior, and the implied behavior should be what we actually observe. These are necessary conditions, not sufficient ones. Rational-choice theory often fails on both counts. The theory may be indeterminate, and people may be irrational. In what was perhaps the first sustained...

User guides to models In Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules it is argud that ‘the multiplicity of models is economics’ strength,’ and that a science that has a different model for everything is non-problematic, since economic models are cases that come with explicit user’s guides — teaching notes on how to apply them. That’s because they are transparent about their critical assumptions and behavioral mechanisms. Hmm … That really is at odds with yours truly’s...

Los economistas y la recesión Torrero despliega en su libro todo un arsenal de citas que ponen de manifiesto su profundo conocimiento y sus exhaustivas lecturas del tema. Y, aunque, como dije, el tono del autor es muy comedido, los textos que aduce muestran lo acerbo de los reproches que se han hecho a los teóricos de las «expectativas racionales» y los «mercados autorregulados». Hay quien dice (Nassim N. Taleb) que «los premios Nobel no son sólo un insulto...

‘Minibot’ — cosa sono e che rischi comportano Si torna a parlare di “minibot”. A un anno esatto dalla formazione del Governo, la Camera dei Deputati ha votato all’unanimità una mozione che lo impegna a sbloccare il pagamento degli arretrati dovuti a professionisti e imprese anche ricorrendo a “titoli di Stato di piccolo taglio”, proprio come recitava il “contratto per il governo del cambiamento” siglato dai due partiti di governo. Ma perché mai lo Stato...

Songs of Hard Times  [embedded content]