Lars P. Syll

Economics becomes more precise and rigorous — and totally useless Nowadays there is almost no place whatsoever in economics education for courses in the history of economic thought and economic methodology. The standard view among mainstream economists is that students shouldn’t think about what they are doing, but just do it. This is deeply worrying. A science that doesn’t self-reflect and asks important methodological and science-theoretical questions...

Brå och brott kopplat till härkomst Som meddelats häromdagen ska Brottsförebyggande rådet (Brå) åter utreda brott kopplat till härkomst. Och debattvågorna går redan höga. Män födda i utlandet är kraftigt överrepresenterade bland de som dömts för att ha begått våldtäkt i Sverige. Detta är fakta — och just därför kan man ju undra varför ledande svenska politiker och brottsforskare inte tyckt att det har varit viktigt eller speciellt intressant att statistiskt...

Significance testing and the real tasks of social science After having mastered all the technicalities of regression analysis and econometrics, students often feel as though they are masters of the universe. I usually cool them down with required reading of Christopher Achen’s modern classic Interpreting and Using Regression. It usually gets​ them back on track again, and they understand that no increase in methodological sophistication … alter the...

På allmän begäran repriseras denna lilla TV-pärla på nytt för alla er som vill veta var intelligensreserven i landet hör hemma … Tänk så mycket som kan sägas i bara en mening! [embedded content]

RCTs — a method in search of ontological foundations RCTs treat social reality as though some simulacrum of laboratory conditions was a feasible and appropriate scientific method to apply, but in development research, unlike laboratory condition treatments, interventions are not manipulations of individuated and additive or simply combinable material components … but rather intervention into material social relations. While for the former, assuming away or...

Why are we getting dumber and dumber? It probably shouldn’t worry us if some pocket of the population saw a decline in IQ as things like education and diet affect IQ and these factors can vary from one group or time to another. But according to this new study it doesn’t appear to be some small segment of the population whose IQ is going down. It appears to be the entire nation of Norway. When scientists from the Norway’s Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic...

Brottsmisstänkta Swedbank-VD får sparken … Skandalerna blev för många och misstankarna om den organiserade brottsligheten gav för dålig publicitet i medierna. Därför tog Swedbanks styrelse beslutet att sparka VD:n Birgitte Bonnesen i förmiddags. Beslutet togs bara timmar före Swedbanks årsstämma skulle inledas … Samtidigt som brottsutredningarna om svindleri och annan organiserad brottslighet fortsätter kan Birgitte Bonnesen skratta hela vägen till banken. Bokstavligt talat....

Die EU ist krank und stirbt  [embedded content]

 [embedded content]

“The EBM (The Swedish Economic Crime Authority) can confirm media reports relating to the fact that action is being taken at Swedbank’s headquarters​,” the authority wrote on its Twitter account. “The action is being carried out by police officers from the EBM’s financial market chamber at the request of chief prosecutor Thomas Langrot in connection to the ongoing investigation into Swedbank.” Several Swedish media had earlier reported that a raid was under way at Swedbank’s...