Lars P. Syll

Nobel Committee making a colossal fool of itself In its ‘scientific background’ description on the 2017 ‘Nobel prize’ in economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences writes (emphasis added): In order to build useful models, economists make simplifying assumptions. A common and fruitful simplification is to assume that agents are perfectly rational. This simplification has enabled economists to build powerful models to analyze a multitude of different...

What is behavioural economics? [embedded content] Great lecture! Yours truly especially appreciates Thaler’s excursion into the history of economics, forcefully showing the amazing extent to which mainstream economics suffers from severe amnesia. And trying to save it as e. g. Paul Krugman, arguing that rationality “in some parts of economics … seems to be a bit of a noble lie, useful as a guide for thinking as long as you keep your tongue firmly in your...

Richard Thaler gets the 2017 ‘Nobel prize’ Today The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it  has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2017 to Richard Thaler. A good choice for once! To yours truly Thaler’s main contribution has been to show that one of the main building blocks of modern mainstream economics — expected utility theory — is fundamentally wrong. If a friend of yours...

I Filosofiska rummet diskuterade Mats Alvesson, Ebba Lisberg Jensen och Tapio Salonen förra veckan kvaliteten på samhällsvetenskaplig forskning. Mycket av dagens samhällsforskning är meningslöst nonsens. Anledningarna till detta är så klart många, men en viktig faktor är att det inom akademin nuförtiden är så viktigt att producera mycket snarare än bra och betydelsefull forskning. En riktigt bra bok eller artikel väger lätt mot tio mer eller mindre ointressanta och irrelevanta...

The limited real-world usefulness of economics Whole Foods is providing the world with a very interesting economics lesson. Immediately after Amazon bought the upscale grocery store chain, it cut prices substantially for many items on the shelves. As a result, sales have boomed by around 25 percent. Was the price cut a good move? Actually, the real lesson might be how little economics has to say … Interestingly, economics doesn’t shed much light on this...

Grenzen der mathematischen Erkenntnis  [embedded content] div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

 [embedded content] Adorno und Horkheimer im Gespräch über die verwaltete Welt und die Krise des Individuums in dieser. div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

The Morgenbesser retort and revealed preference theory The experiment reported here was designed to reflect the fact that revealed preference theory is concerned with hypothetical choices rather than actual choices over time. In contrast to earlier experimental studies, the possibility that the different choices are made under different preference patterns can almost be ruled out. We find a considerable number of violations of the revealed preference...

John Nash on unsound game theory  [embedded content] What John Nash (!) says underlines the very fundamental methodological weakness of game theory and neoclassical mainstream economics at large. Overemphasizing​ the reach of instrumental rationality and abstracting​ away from the influence of non-economic factors, reduces the analysis to a pure thought experiment without any substantial connection to reality​. Limiting theoretical economic analysis in this...

The law of demand — nothing but a useless tautology Mainstream economics is usually considered to be very ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise.’ And yes, indeed, it’s certainly full of ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise’ statements like “the state of the economy will remain the same as long as it doesn’t change.” Although ‘true,’ this is, however — as most other analytical statements — neither particularly interesting nor informative. As is well known, the law of demand is...