Lars P. Syll

Keynes’ critique of econometrics — still valid after all these years To apply statistical and mathematical methods to the real-world economy, the econometrician has to make some quite strong assumptions. In a review of Tinbergen’s econometric work — published in The Economic Journal in 1939 — John Maynard Keynes gave a comprehensive critique of Tinbergen’s work, focusing on the limiting and unreal character of the assumptions that econometric analyses build...

This is not new to most of you of course. You are already steeped in McCloskey’s Rhetoric. Or you ought to be. After all economists are simply telling stories about the economy. Sometimes we are taken in. Sometimes we are not. Unfortunately McCloskey herself gets a little too caught up in her stories. As in her explanation as to how she can be both a feminist and a free market economist: “The market is the great liberator of women; it has not been the state, which is after all...

Programmet som gör det värt att betala varenda krona i radio- och tv-avgiften I dessa tider, när ljudrummet dränks i den kommersiella radions tyckmyckentrutade ordbajseri och fullständigt intetsägande pubertalflamsande tjafs, har man nästan gett upp. Men det finns ljus i mörkret. I programmet Text och musik med Eric Schüldt — som sänds på söndagsförmiddagarna i P2 mellan klockan 11 och 12 — kan man lyssna på seriös musik och en programledare som har något...

‘Rational choice’ history — a case of models not fitting the facts Rational choice history is in a worse situation than that of either mechanistic biology in the seventeenth century or of sociobiology today. The analogy would be appropriate if it were mainly a question of refining the theories and of gathering more evidence. One could refine theory by incorporating bounded rationality and quasi-rational choice, so as to match more closely the way in which...

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National security adviser John Bolton — a bullying madman John R. Bolton, chosen by President Trump to be his new national security adviser, does not need the Senate’s endorsement to succeed H. R. McMaster in the job. But in 2005, the extraordinary refusal to confirm his nomination to be President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations by a Republican-controlled committee is worth revisiting for what it revealed about Mr. Bolton and what it may...

How to interpret and use regression analysis After having mastered all the technicalities of regression analysis and econometrics, students often feel as though they are the masters of the universe. I usually cool them down with a required reading of Christopher Achen’s modern classic — Interpreting and Using Regression. It usually gets them back on track again, and they understand that “no increase in methodological sophistication … alter the fundamental...

Do ​economic models — really — explain anything at all? In my view, scientific theories are not to be considered ‘true’ or ‘false.’ In constructing such a theory, we are not trying to get at the truth, or even to approximate to it: rather, we are trying to organize our thoughts and observations in a useful manner. Robert Aumann What ‘Nobel prize-winning’ economist Robert Aumann and other mainstream economics defenders of scientific storytelling ‘forget’ is...

Transitivity — a questionable ‘rational choice’ assumption My doctor once recommended I take niacin for the sake of my heart. Yours probably has too, unless you’re a teenager or a marathon runner or a member of some other metabolically privileged caste. Here’s the argument: Consumption of niacin is correlated with higher levels of HDL, or “good cholesterol,” and high HDL is correlated with lower risk of “cardiovascular events.” If you’re not a native...

Yours truly debatterar i dagens Göteborgs-Posten den sanslösa järnvägsnedläggnig som staten i det tysta är i full gång med: Infrastrukturen tycks löpa amok med klimat, demokrati och skattemiljarder. Trafikverket fortsätter att vansköta den svenska järnvägen och bluffar nu även igenom nedläggning av elbanor i Västra Götaland. Landets järnvägar är också mest 1800-talskrokiga enkelspår, en otänkbar standard för moderna vägar. Samtidigt storsatsar regeringen och trafikverket på...