Lars P. Syll

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...

Econometrics cannot establish the truth value of a fact. Never has. Never will. There seems to be a pervasive human aversion to uncertainty, and one way to reduce feelings of uncertainty is to invest faith in deduction as a sufficient guide to truth. Unfortunately, such faith is as logically unjustified as any religious creed, since a deduction produces certainty about the real world only when its...

The illusion of certainty  [embedded content] Advertisements

Why a monetary union cannot work without also being a political union Foreseeing the future is difficult. But sometimes it seems as though some people get it terribly right … Some day the nations of Europe may be ready to merge their national identities and create a new European Union – the United States of Europe. If and when they do, a European Government will take over all the functions which the Federal government now provides in the U.S., or in Canada...

The mess at the heart of the EU The EU establishment has been held to account for the euro mess, for austerity policies that turned recession into depression, for the galloping inequality, and for the millions and millions of unemployed. The EU austerity policies bread understandable and righteous anger — but also ugly far-right xenophobic political movements taking advantage of the frustration that austerity policies inevitably produce. Ultimately this...

My finest hour — Sweden’s euro referendum Fifteen years ago, Swedish citizens were asked if they wanted to join the eurozone. Of the 83 % registered voters who participated in the referendum close to 57 % cast their ballot for the ‘no’ side. The result of the referendum came as a total shock to the Swedish establishment. All major parties and business organizations were for the euro.But although the ‘yes’ side outspent the ‘no’ side ten to one, the ‘no’...

Med Thatcher som idol ”Har du någon egen förebild? – Ja … Sen är jag väldigt fascinerad av Margaret Thatcher. Hon hade verkligen råg i ryggen och visade var skåpet ska stå … När man har sett henne i debattstolen så mår man bra hela dagen! Hon har betytt mer för eftervärlden än någon annan brittisk ledare. Jag försöker ta efter henne … Annie Lööf “Fascinerad av Margaret Thatcher”? Undrar vad mer hon tänker på? Är det månne Thatchers ohöljda förmåga att...

Probability and rationality — trickier than you might think The Coin-tossing Problem My friend Bengt says that on the first day he got the following sequence of Heads and Tails when tossing a coin: H H H H H H H H H H And on the second day he says that he got the following sequence: H T T H H T T H T H Which day-report makes you suspicious? Most people I ask this question says the first day-report looks suspicious. But actually,​ both days are equally...

What the euro is all about There are still economists and politicians out there who think that the euro is the only future for Europe. However, there seem to be some rather basic facts about optimal currency areas that it would perhaps be wise to consider … The idea that the euro has “failed” is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do. That progenitor is...

In a post on his blog, Paul Krugman argues that ‘Keynesian’ macroeconomics more than anything else “made economics the model-oriented field it has become.” In Krugman’s eyes, Keynes was a “pretty klutzy modeler,” and it was only thanks to Samuelson’s famous 45-degree diagram and Hicks’ IS-LM that things got into place. Although admitting that economists have a tendency to use ”excessive math” and “equate hard math with quality” he still vehemently defends — and always has —...