Lars P. Syll

Was Julia Kristeva a secret agent? The notion surfaced on Tuesday, when the Bulgarian government commission charged with reviewing the files of the country’s notorious Communist-era secret service released a terse document alleging that the Bulgarian-born Ms. Kristeva, who has lived in France since 1966, had served in the early 1970s as an agent known by the code name “Sabina.” The allegation was greeted with shocked disbelief by those immersed in the work...

Beware of the Coase theorem! Willingness​ to walk away from an ‘unfair’ offer is [one] reason why the predictions of the Coase theorem often fail. I had discovered this firsthand many years earlier in Rochester. Our home there had a willow tree in the backyard … The neighbor hated that tree. He asked me to have the tree removed … I knew the Coase theorem … So I went to talk to my neighbor and told him that, while the tree did not bother me, if he felt...

Mathematical economics — an unmixed evil Balliol Croft, Cambridge 27. ii. 06 My dear Bowley, I have not been able to lay my hands on any notes as to Mathematico-economics that would be of any use to you: and I have very indistinct memories of what I used to think on the subject. I never read mathematics now: in fact I have forgotten even how to integrate a good many things. But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that...

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The face of a real hero French policeman Arnaud Beltrame, shot to death by an Islamist gunman when he swapped himself for a hostage in a supermarket siege in the southwest town of Trèbes. Advertisements

Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each​ competitor has to pick not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom...

Sveriges nationalekonomer träffas i höst på Linnéuniversitet i Växjö för en numera återkommande vartannat års-konferens. Utöver forskningsseminarier arrangeras utdelning av Assar Lindbeck-medaljen … [embedded content] Advertisements

[embedded content] Filmer kan beröra oss på många olika sätt. De flesta är spännande eller roliga tidsfördriv. Men sen finns också de riktigt stora filmerna. De som tar tag i oss och tränger djupt under skinnet och skakar om oss. För alltid. Kjell-Åke Anderssons filmatisering av Göran Tunströms Juloratoriet — med gudabenådad musik av Stefan Nilsson — är en sådan film. Det är en av de sorgligaste filmer som kan ses. Men på samma gång kanske också den allra vackraste. Den om...

 [embedded content] En legend har gått ur tiden. Och ja, det stora vemodet rullar in, när man tänker på alla dessa år denne ‘working class hero’ med allt sitt engagemang, sociala patos och musik spridit glädje och ljus i våra liv. R.I.P. Advertisements

Why game theory never will be anything but a footnote​ in the history of social science Half a century ago there were widespread hopes game theory would provide a unified theory of social science. Today it has become obvious those hopes did not materialize. This ought to come as no surprise. Reductionist and atomistic models of social interaction – such as the ones mainstream economics and game theory are founded on – will never deliver sustainable building...