Lars P. Syll

Keynes’ General Theory at 80 – lessons learned and lost A couple of years ago — when visiting one of Helsinki’s many nice cafés and restaurants — yours truly read the following inscription on a mirror and thought Keynes must have been here … Anyhow — slides from yours truly’s keynote presentation at the Kalevi Sorsa Foundation celebration of the 80th anniversary of Keynes’ General Theory is available here.

Federal Job Guarantee or Universal Basic Income — pros and cons  [embedded content]

Publishing ‘hacked’ p-values — the chocolate hoax  [embedded content]

Först har vi neoklassisk mikroteori … I sin mest radikala form, som den formulerades av den så kallad österrikiska skolan — med utgångspunkt från Karl Menger och andra kända namn som Karl Wieser, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk och Friedrich von Hayek … Friedman hade fört fram sina idéer i polemik med den keynesianskt inspirerade så kallade Phillipskurvan … Friedman menade dock att denna teori var felaktig eftersom ekonomiska aktörer i förväg kalkylerar till exempel med en viss...

Revisiting the foundations of randomness and probability Regarding models as metaphors leads to a radically different view regarding the interpretation of probability. This view has substantial advantages over conventional interpretations … Probability does not exist in the real world. We must search for her in the Platonic world of ideals. We have shown that the interpretation of probability as a metaphor leads to several substantial changes in...

Why do women still earn less than men? Spending the morning going through Francine Blau’s and Lawrence Kahn’s JEL survey of modern research on the gender wage gap, yours truly was struck almost immediately how little that research really has accomplished in terms of explaining gender wage discrimination. With all the heavy regression and econometric alchemy used, wage discrimination is somehow more or less conjured away … Trying to reduce the risk of having...

Progressive capitalism? Is that even possible!?  [embedded content]

For-profit​ private schools — a total disaster Neo-liberals and libertarians have always provided a lot of ideologically founded ideas and ‘theories’ to underpin their Panglossian view on markets. But when they are tested against reality they usually turn out to be wrong. The promised results are simply not to be found. And that goes for for-profit private schools too. To make education more like a private good, [voucher advocates] tried to change the...

What we do in life echoes in eternity In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your own understanding, having the ​courage to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion’, authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is a capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but stand up for one’s rights not to be humiliated or abused. Courage is...

The interest rate fallacy While currency-issuing governments do not need to sell bonds, the fact that they do creates no competition for finite savings between public and private borrowers. First, government deficits stimulate growth and private savings as national income grows … Moreover, deficits place downward pressure on interest rates. Debt issuance serves to allow the central bank to maintain​ a positive target interest rate by providing investors...