Lars P. Syll

When odds ratios mislead (wonkish) A few years ago, some researchers from Georgetown University published in the New England Journal of Medicine a study that demonstrated systematic race and sex bias in the behavior of America’s doctors. Needless to say, this finding was widely reported in the media: Washington Post: “Physicians said they would refer blacks and women to heart specialists for cardiac catheterization tests only 60 percent as often as they...

Ricardo’s … interest was in the clear-cut result of direct, practical significance. In order to get this he cut that general system to pieces, bundled up as large parts of it as possible, and put them in cold storage — so that as many things as possible should be frozen and ‘given.’ He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by theses assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, he set up...

The increasing ascendancy of real business cycle theories of various stripes, with their common view that the economy is best modeled as a floating Walrasian equilibrium, buffeted by productivity shocks, is indicative of the depths of the divisions separating academic macroeconomists … If  these theories are correct, they imply that the macroeconomics developed in the wake of the Keynesian Revolution is well confined to the ashbin of history. And they suggest that most of the...

I den stora sorgens famn (personal) [embedded content] Med värme och kärlek tillägnad Ingrid, Anton och Iskra. Vän! I förödelsens stund, när ditt inre av mörker betäckes, När i ett avgrundsdjup minne och aning förgå, Tanken famlar försagd bland skugggestalter och irrbloss, Hjärtat ej sucka kan, ögat ej gråta förmår; När från din nattomtöcknade själ eldvingarne falla, Och du till intet, med skräck, känner dig sjunka på nytt, Säg, vem räddar dig...

  Spending some lovely Indian​ Summer days at our summer residence in the Karlskrona​ archipelago. Pure energy for the soul. Advertisements

 [embedded content] Zu Hause bist immer nur du Zu Hause bist immer nur du Du hast mich abgeholt und hingebracht Bist mitten in der Nacht wegen mir aufgewacht Ich hab in letzter Zeit so oft daran gedacht Advertisements

Too much of ‘we controlled for’ The gender pay gap is a fact that, sad to say, to a non-negligible extent is the result of discrimination. And even though many women are not deliberately discriminated against, but rather self-select into lower-wage jobs, this in no way magically explains away the discrimination gap. As decades of socialization research has shown, women may be ‘structural’ victims of impersonal social mechanisms that in different ways...

Bayesian networks and causal diagrams Whereas a Bayesian network​ can only tell us how likely one event is, given that we observed another, causal diagrams can answer interventional and counterfactual questions. For example, the causal fork A <– B –> C tells us in no uncertain terms that wiggling A would have no effect on C, no matter how intense the wiggle. On the other hand, a Bayesian network is not equipped to handle a ‘wiggle,’ or to tell the...

Healing my wounded soul (personal)  [embedded content] Advertisements

Eton College is the latest in a series of schools to crack down on mobile phone use among their pupils. Last year, the £39,000-a-year Brighton College started forcing students to hand in their mobile phones at the beginning of each day in an effort to wean them off their “addiction” to technology. Students in year seven, eight and nine are now required to hand in their mobile phones at the beginning of the day to teachers who will lock it away, ready for collection when they...