Lars P. Syll

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]

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“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...

Sweden’s vanishing debt feeds urgent calls for a spending boom Sweden now has so little debt that many are starting to wonder why the government isn’t spending a lot more … The biggest Scandinavian economy, which relies on global trade for about half its output, is slowing down. But the government has so far appeared reluctant to use its fiscal leeway to fight that trend. That’s drawn criticism from analysts, with some even referring to the government’s...

Das globalisierungskritische Netzwerk Attac erlebt seit dem Entzug der Gemeinnützigkeit einem Bericht zufolge einen Spendenboom. Seit dem Urteil des Bundesfinanzhofs vor einem Monat habe die Organisation insgesamt 80.000 Euro an Spenden erhalten, berichtete das Magazin „Focus“ am Samstag. Das sei etwa vier Mal so viel wie im gleichen Zeitraum in den vergangenen zehn Jahren. Auch habe Attac seit der richterlichen Entscheidung vom 26. Februar 600 neue Mitglieder gewonnen … Der...

My favourite Stockholm girl Visiting​ Stockholm yours truly, of course, takes the opportunity to spend some time with a ​daughter who lives there (after having graduated from the Stockholm School of Economics and now works in the finance sector). Picture taken eighteen years ago at our summer residence.

Touring again. Visiting Stockholm. Sweden’s Television, Parliament and Riksbank. Regular blogging to be resumed later next week.