Lars P. Syll

The modern state can make anything it chooses generally acceptable as money and thus establish its value quite apart from any connection, even of the most formal kind, with gold or backing of any kind. It is true that a simple declaration that such and such is money will not do, even if backed by the most convincing constitutional evidence of the state’s absolute sovereignty. But if the state is willing to accept the proposed money in the payment of taxes and other obligations...

Karl-Erik In Memoriam (personal) [embedded content] Till minnet av vår käre granne — gentlemannen, konsthandlaren, författaren och tidningsmannen Karl-Erik Johansson (1934-2019). RIP.

How money is created Everything we know is not just wrong – it’s backwards. When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There’s really no limit on how much...

The history of MMT  [embedded content]

How to cure National Debt Hysteria  [embedded content]

Kungar och sultaner med närhet till folket Carl XVI Gustaf besökte år 2004 Brunei och var då imponerad över att sultanen har ”en kolossal närhet till folket.” Sultanen tilldelades samma år den svenska Serafimerorden. I sultanatet Brunei ska från och med idag sharialagar börja tillämpas. Utomäktenskapligt sex och samkönat sex kan nu straffas med spöstraff och stening till döds. Undrar om det finns åtminstone en monark som idag ångrar tidigare uttalanden om...

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Job Guarantee and inflation control The employment buffer stock approach, which is more usually​ referred to in the literature as the Job Guarantee (JG), defines a policy framework in which government operate​s a buffer stock of jobs to absorb workers who are unable to find employment in the private sector … The JG approach stands in contradistinction to the NAIRU approach because instead of manipulating the employment rate by creating unemployment when...

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In his new history of experimental social science — Randomistas: How radical researchers are changing our world — Andrew Leigh gives an introduction to the RCT (randomized controlled trial) method for conducting experiments in medicine, psychology, development economics, and policy evaluation. Although it mentions there are critiques that can be waged against it, the author does not let that shadow his overwhelmingly enthusiastic view on RCT. Among mainstream economists, this...