Lars P. Syll

 [embedded content] The economic implications of gender discrimination are most serious. To deny women is to deprive a country of labor​ and talent, but — even worse — to undermine the drive to achievement of boys and men. One cannot rear young people in such wise that half of them think themselves superior by biology, without dulling ambition and devaluing accomplishment … To be sure, any society will have its achievers no matter what, if only because it has its own division...

Econometrics — the path from cause to effect [embedded content] In their book — Mastering ‘Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect — Joshua D. Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke write: Our first line of attack on the causality problem is a randomized experiment, often called a randomized trial. In a randomized trial, researchers change the causal variables of interest … for a group selected using something like a coin toss. By changing circumstances randomly,...

Böckerna jag alltid bär med mig I tre decennier förde Roland Svensson dagböcker där han i ord och bild tecknade ner händelser och tankar från Stockholms skärgård. Dagböckerna från 1949 och 1950 — i facsimile — köpte jag på Roland Svensson-utställningen på Waldemars udde år 2011. Tack Roland för denna kulturskatt!

Random walks (student stuff)  [embedded content]

This is my take on Rogoff’s “Modern Monetary Nonsense” Rogoff: “A number of leading US progressives, who may well be in power after the 2020 elections, advocate using the Fed’s balance sheet as a cash cow to fund expansive new social programs, especially in view of current low inflation and interest rates.” Rogoff’s use of the expression “as a cash cow to fund” ignores the fact that the Fed is already the “cash cow” that makes all economy’s payments possible. The Fed lends to...

[embedded content]Twentyfive years ago I met this wonderful lady. As always, for you, Jeanette Meyer. “Though I speak with the tongues of angels, If I have not love… My words would resound with but a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy​… And understand all mysteries… and all knowledge… And though I have all faith So that I could remove mountains, If I have not love… I am nothing.”

Summers​ shameless assault on MMT First,​ it was Paul Krugman. Then came Kenneth Rogoff. And now Lawrence Summers has felt the urge to attack MMT and defend mainstream economics: There is widespread frustration with the performance of the economy … Altered economic conditions have led to the development of new economic ideas … And now, these new ideas are being oversimplified and exaggerated by fringe economists who hold them out as offering the proverbial...

Krugman a Keynesian? No way! In his critique of MMT the last couple of weeks, Krugman has claimed Stephanie Kelton and other MMTers have got things terribly wrong: Anyway, what actually happens at least much of the time – although, crucially, not when we’re at the zero lower bound – is more or less the opposite: political tradeoffs determine taxes and spending, and monetary policy adjusts the interest rate to achieve full employment without inflation. Under...

Economic ideas you should forget — the axioms of revealed preference The axioms of revealed preference have been part of the foundations of economics since they were formulated by Paul Samuelson in 1947. These principles allowed economists to continue to use the calculus of utilitarianism even though utilitarianism had ceased to be a fashionable philosophical doctrine. And they enabled economists to give a particular, and special, meaning to the term...

  [h/t Jeanette Meyer]