Lars P. Syll

People having bad luck when trying to think A couple of years ago Andrew Lilico wrote an article in The Telegraph arguing that good economists almost always are — mirabile dictu — right: Lord Turner wrote two reports creating important government policies based on his claim that people are often irrational — his pension review of 2005 and his report on the financial crisis in 2009. Indeed, in his famous Turner Review of the financial crisis as chairman of...

Statisticism — confusing statistics and research Coupled with downright incompetence in statistics, we often find the syndrome that I have come to call statisticism: the notion that computing is synonymous with doing research, the naïve faith that statistics is a complete or sufficient basis for scientific methodology, the superstition that statistical formulas exist for evaluating such things as the relative merits of different substantive theories or the...

Globalization is not a win-win!  [embedded content] Advertisements

Touring again. Visiting Stockholm. Guest appearance​s​ in the Swedish Parliament and Riksbank. Regular blogging to be resumed during the weekend. Advertisements

 [embedded content] In memory of Kristina, beloved wife and mother of David and Tora. Today, twenty-five years ago, the unthinkable happened. People say that time heals all wounds. I wish that was true. Advertisements

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Oh dear, oh dear, Krugman gets it so wrong, so wrong Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world. It is compelled to be this, because, unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time. The object of a model is to segregate the semi-permanent or relatively constant factors from those which...

Finanspolitiska rådet överlämnade idag sin årliga rapport till regeringen. Man konstaterar att svensk ekonomi går bra och att det därför är läga att strama åt statsfinanserna … – Finanspolitiken kan inte anses vara väl avvägd i förhållande till konjunkturen, säger Harry Flam som är ordförande för finanspolitiska rådet. De menar att den expansiva finanspolitiken ökar risken för överhettning i ekonomin och tär på beredskapen att stabilisera nästa konjunkturnedgång … Rådet slår...

Shame — a gender pay gap solution By making companies publicly air their salary information, Britain intends to force a reckoning. Officials in London hope the embarrassing revelations in the reports … will shame companies into doing more to close the divide. The push is one of a growing number of efforts among countries to promote the principle of equal pay. Australia recently mandated gender pay gap reporting for most companies. In Germany, a new law will...