Lars P. Syll

In “modern” macroeconomics — Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium, New Synthesis, New Classical and New ‘Keynesian’ — variables are treated as if drawn from a known “data-generating process” that unfolds over time and on which we therefore have access to heaps of historical time-series. If we do not assume that we know the “data-generating process” – if we do not have the “true” model – the whole edifice collapses. And of course, it has to. Who really honestly believes that...

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The gender pay gap Julian Jessop has a point when he says these gaps might not reflect overt discrimination by employees. They might instead be due to women sorting into lower-wage jobs. Airlines, for example, have big gender pay gaps because women tend to be low-paid cabin crew whilst men are higher-paid pilots. Such gender-based preferences, however, are NOT the end of the story. For one thing, as Sarah O’Connor says, employers might perhaps do more to...

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How to get published​ in top economics journals By the early 1980s it was already common knowledge among people I hung out with that the only way to get non-crazy macro-economics published was to wrap sensible assumptions about output and employment in something else, something that involved rational expectations and intertemporal stuff and made the paper respectable. And yes, that was conscious knowledge, which shaped the kinds of papers we wrote. Paul...

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But these more recent writers like their predecessors were still dealing with a system in which the amount of the factors employed was given and the other relevant facts were known more or less for certain. This does not mean that they were dealing with a system in which change was ruled out, or even one in which the disappointment of expectation was ruled out. But at any given time facts and expectations were assumed to be given in a definite and calculable form; and risks,...