Lars P. Syll

Globalization — a win-lose situation ZEIT ONLINE: Einigen Menschen würde es ohne Globalisierung also besser gehen? Holger Görg: Ja. Das ist das große Problem der Globalisierung. ZEIT ONLINE: Was kann man dagegen tun? Görg: Da sind die Staaten gefordert. Es muss ein soziales Sicherungsnetz geben, das die Menschen auffängt und ihnen ein Einkommen garantiert, wenn sie ihren Job verlieren. So wie in Deutschland und den meisten entwickelten Ländern. Aber das ist...

Two words say​ it all!  [embedded content] One cannot but grieve for a nation that has given us presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and now is run by a witless clown. An absolute disgrace. Advertisements

Contrast explanations in economics For all scholars seriously interested in questions on what makes up a good scientific explanation, Alan Garfinkel’s Forms of Explanation (Yale University Press 1990) is a must-read. A lot of recent work done within different realist schools in theory of science — e.g. Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Richard W Miller and Tony Lawson — issue not so little from questions and problems posed by Garfinkel. Especially his advocacy...

There is a nice YouTube video with Tony O’Hagan interviewing Dennis Lindley. Of course, Dennis is a legend and his impact on the field of statistics is huge. [embedded content] At one point, Tony points out that some people liken Bayesian inference to a religion. Dennis claims this is false. Bayesian inference, he correctly points out, starts with some basic axioms and then the rest follows by deduction. This is logic, not religion. I agree that the mathematics of Bayesian...

 [embedded content] Advertisements

 [embedded content] Advertisements

On randomness and probability in economics Modern mainstream economics relies to a large degree on the notion of probability. To at all be amenable to applied economic analysis, economic observations have to be conceived as random events that are analyzable within a probabilistic framework. But is it really necessary to model the economic system as a system where randomness can only be analyzed and understood when based on an a priori notion of...

The Permanent Income Hypothesis Milton Friedman’s Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) says that people’s consumption is not affected by short-term fluctuations in incomes since people only spend more money when they think that their lifetime incomes change. Believing Friedman is right, mainstream economists have for decades argued that Keynesian fiscal policies, therefore, are ineffectual. As shown over and over again for the last three decades, empirical...

Maskinerna är våra vänner  [embedded content] Advertisements

 [embedded content] Advertisements