Lars P. Syll

Stage 0. Late 1960’s. The Phelps volume, and Milton Friedman’s paper (pdf), both thinking about the microfoundations of the Phillips Curve, the difference between actual and expected inflation, and the role of monetary policy. This was the ancestral homeland of both New Keynesian and New Classical macroeconomics, which could not be distinguished at this stage … Stage 1. Mid 1970’s. Now we see the difference. A distinct New Keynesian approach emerges. New Keynesians assume that...

What is wrong with economic theory “A wonderful set of clearly written and highly informative essays by a scholar who is knowledgeable, critical and sharp enough to see how things really are in the discipline, and honest and brave enough to say how things are. A must read especially for those truly concerned and/or puzzled about the state of modern economics.” Tony Lawson Table of Contents Introduction What is (wrong with) economic theory? Capturing...

The myth of success   div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

Economics — nothing but an ideological paranoia  [embedded content] Economists have a tendency to get enthralled by their theories and models ​and forget that behind the figures and abstractions there is a real world with real people. Real people that have to pay dearly for fundamentally flawed doctrines and recommendations. Let’s make sure the consequences will rest on the conscience of those economists. div{float:left;margin-right:10px;}...

The eminently quotable Robert Solow says it all: To get right down to it, I suspect that the attempt to construct economics as an axiomatically based hard science is doomed to fail. There are many partially overlapping reasons for believing this … A modern economy is a very complicated system. Since we cannot conduct controlled on its smaller parts, or even observe them in isolation, the classical hard- science devices for discriminating between competing hypotheses are closed...

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Does competition really eliminate bad bosses? But what of the argument that competition eventually eliminates bad bosses? True, it does sometimes; the relatively egalitarian John Lewis Partnership has done better than department stores such as House of Fraser or Debenhams, for example. But market forces are weak (and perhaps getting weaker). One reason for this is simply state intervention; without this, almost all shareholder-owned banks with their...

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of...

Revealed preference theory — much fuss about ‘not very much’ We must learn WHY the argument for revealed preference, which deceived Samuelson, is wrong. As per standard positivist ideas, preferences are internal to the heart and unobservable; hence they cannot be used in scientific theories. So Samuelson came up with the idea of using the observable Choices – unobservable preferences are revealed by observable choices … Yet the basic argument is wrong; one...

On the limits of game theory  [embedded content] Back in 1991, when yours truly earned his first PhD​ with a dissertation on decision making and rationality in social choice theory and game theory, I concluded that “repeatedly it seems as though mathematical tractability and elegance — rather than realism and relevance — have been the most applied guidelines for the behavioural assumptions being made. On a political and social level, ​it is doubtful if the...