Lars P. Syll

My favourite girls (personal)   Hedda (5), Linnea (19), and Tora (25) Advertisements

Being a class mongrel We were working class, and you don’t lose that. Later on, I bolted on middle classness but I think the working-class thing hasn’t gone away and it never will go away. Quite a few of my interactions and responses are still the responses I had when I was 18 or 19. And the other things are bolted on and it is a mix. It is what it is, and a lot of people are like that. I’m a class mongrel. Melvyn Bragg Most people think of social...

Kalecki and Keynes on the loanable funds fallacy It should be emphasized that the equality between savings and investment … will be valid under all circumstances. In particular, it will be independent of the level of the rate of interest which was customarily considered in economic theory to be the factor equilibrating the demand for and supply of new capital. In the present conception investment, once carried out, automatically provides the savings...

In search of causality One of the few statisticians that yours truly have on the blogroll is Andrew Gelman. Although not sharing his Bayesian leanings, I find his open-minded, thought-provoking and non-dogmatic statistical thinking highly recommendable. The plaidoyer below for ‘reverse causal questioning’ is typical Gelmanian: When statistical and econometrc methodologists write about causal inference, they generally focus on forward causal questions. We...

Kalecki on wage-led growth One of the main features of the capitalist system is the fact that what is to the advantage of a single entrepreneur does not necessarily benefit all entrepreneurs as a class. If one entrepreneur reduces wages he is able ceteris paribus to expand production; but once all entrepreneurs do the same thing — the result will be entirely different. Let us assume that wages have been in fact generally reduced … and in consequence...

The power of self-belief …   Advertisements

Istället för terapi (personal) I alla moderna människors liv behövs det tid för andhämtning och reflektion. Och ibland — när alla möjliga och omöjliga måsten och krav från omgivningen bara blir för många och högljudda — kan det vara skönt att dra sig undan lite grand och slå av på takten för en stund. Alla har vi väl olika sätt att göra det på. Själv brukar jag gå in på Öppet Arkiv och titta på Gubben i stugan — Nina Hedenius underbart fina dokumentärfilm...

Kausala modeller och heterogenitet (wonkish) I The Book of Why för Judea Pearl fram flera tunga skäl till varför den numera så populära kausala grafteoretiska ansatsen är att föredra framför mer traditionella regressionsbaserade förklaringsmodeller. Ett av skälen är att kausala grafer är icke-parametriska och därför inte behöver anta exempelvis additivitet och/eller frånvaro av interaktionseffekter — pilar och noder ersätter regressionsanalysens nödvändiga...

Truth exists, and so does uncertainty. Uncertainty acknowledges the existence of an underlying truth: you cannot be uncertain of nothing: nothing is the complete absence of anything. You are uncertain of something, and if there is some thing, there must be truth. At the very least, it is that this thing exists. Probability, which is the science of uncertainty, therefore aims at truth. Probability presupposes truth; it is a measure or characterization of truth. Probability is...

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