Lars P. Syll

Study shows higher minimum wages work  [embedded content] Advertisements

Is economics — really — a science? As yours truly has reported repeatedly during the last couple of years, economics students all over Europe and the U.S. are increasingly questioning if the kind of economics they are taught — mainstream neoclassical economics — is of any value. Some have even started to question if economics really is a science. My own take on the issue is that economics has lost immensely in terms of status and prestige during the last...

The minimum wage myth  [embedded content] Lo and behold! But of course — when facts and theory don’t agree, it’s the facts that have to be wrong … Just as no physicist would claim that “water runs uphill,” no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence,...

Where modern macroeconomics went wrong In the latest issue of Oxford Review of Economic Policy (Volume 34, Issue 1-2, 2018) the editors have invited some well-known contemporary mainstream macroeconomists​ (including e.g. Simon Wren-Lewis, Randall Wright, Olivier Blanchard, Ricardo Reis, Joseph Stiglitz) to give their views on how to rebuild macroeconomic theory for the future. Some of the contributions are interesting to read. Others — like Wren-Lewis and...

Time for another crash? On Black Friday 1929 market fundamentalist wet dreams of eternal growth took a serious hit. The stock market bubble exploded and crashed. Today​ we have a stock market situation much reminding of that in 1929. The Shiller P/E ratio is now even higher than that year. Those of us who know our Keynes-Fisher-Kindleberger-Minsky and have not completely forgotten all about economic​ history are starting to worry …...

And here’s another ‘stable genius’ …  [embedded content] Advertisements

The thing that people just don’t get about statistics The thing that people just don’t get is that is just how easy it is to get “p less than .01” using uncontrolled comparisons … Statistics educators, including myself, have to take much of the blame for this sad state of affairs. We go around sending the message that it’s possible to get solid causal inference from experimental or observational data, as long as you have a large enough sample size and a...

I think there is an element of truth in the view that the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times [is necessary]. Once it is debunked, [it] takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. There must be discipline in the allocation of resources or you will have anarchistic chaos and inefficiency. And one of the functions of old fashioned religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be regarded as myths...

[embedded content] To my children. Never give in. Never give​ up. Advertisements

Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son  [embedded content] France Gall 1947-2018. R.I.P. Advertisements