Lars P. Syll

The applied econometrician is like a farmer who notices that the yield is somewhat higher under the trees where birds roost, and he uses this for evidence that bird droppings increase the yield. However, when he presents his findings … another farmer … objects that he used the same data but came up with the conclusion that moderate amounts of shade increase the yields … A bright chap … then observes that these two hypotheses are indistinguishable, given the available data …...

What is Post-Keynesian economics?  [embedded content]

Rom i regnet (personal)  [embedded content] Fortfarande så underbart bra. Det är bara sluta ögonen och lyssna, så är man tillbaka i den värld och de upplevelser som var ens eget 70-tal. Tack Ulf!

Gretl — econometrics made easy  [embedded content] Thanks to Allin Cottrell and Riccardo Lucchetti we today have access to a high-quality​ tool for doing and teaching econometrics — Gretl. And, best of all, it is totally free! Gretl is up to the tasks you may have, so why spend money on expensive commercial programs? The latest snapshot version of Gretl can be downloaded here. [And yes, I do know there’s another fabulously good and free program — R. But R...

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The vain search​ for The Holy Grail of Science Traditionally, philosophers have focused mostly on the logical template of inference. The paradigm-case has been deductive inference, which is topic-neutral and context-insensitive. The study of deductive rules has engendered the search for the Holy Grail: syntactic and topic-neutral accounts of all prima facie reasonable inferential rules. The search has hoped to find rules that are transparent and...

Mobileländet i svenska skolor Efter att ha varit ute och besökt en rad skolor under några veckors tid kan yours truly inte låta bli att fundera över saker man skulle vilja ändra och förbättra. Och en och annan undran kan man ju också kosta på sig. Som t ex varför vi i vårt land inte följt det franska beslutet att totalförbjuda mobiltelefoner i skolan. Och nej, jag VET att mobilförbud inte löser skolans alla problem. Ingen vettig människa har någonsin sagt...

Bayesian moons made of green cheese In other words, if a decision-maker thinks something cannot be true and interprets this to mean it has zero probability, he will never be influenced by any data, which is surely absurd. So leave a little probability for the moon being made of green cheese; it can be as small as 1 in a million, but have it there since otherwise an army of astronauts returning with samples of the said cheese will leave you unmoved. To get...