Lars P. Syll

Swedish-Eritrean journalist and writer Dawit Isaak has been held in Eritrean prison for 22 years without trial. He is the only Swedish citizen held as a prisoner of conscience. The Swedish government should initiate criminal proceedings against those responsible in Eritrea for crimes against humanity. Dictators all over the world must be held accountable for human rights. [embedded content]

When great souls die Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened … And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. Maya Angelou In loving memory of...

.[embedded content] As always a pleasure listening to Edward Leamer and his critical views on the (mis)uses of statistical methods in empirical research. Main message: without a deep understanding of context, statistical and econometric analyses are useless!

Why we need causality in science Many journal editors request authors to avoid causal language, and many observational researchers, trained in a scientific environment that frowns upon causality claims, spontaneously refrain from mentioning the C-word (“causal”) in their work … The proscription against the C-word is harmful to science because causal inference is a core task of science, regardless of whether the study is randomized or nonrandomized. Without...

‘Way on down south London town’ .[embedded content] Unforgettable!

Always, but always, plot your data. Remember that data quality is at least as important as data quantity. Always ask yourself, “Do these results make economic/common sense”? Check whether your “statistically significant” results are also “numerically/economically significant”. Be sure that you know exactly what assumptions are used/needed to obtain the results relating to the properties of any estimator or test that you use. Just because someone else has used a particular...

Dirk Ehnts über Staatsschulden & MMT .[embedded content] Dieses Interview ist wirklich hörenswert. Yours truly schätze Dirk Ehnts’ eher pragmatische Haltung gegenüber MMT und der Frage des Umgangs mit Staatsschulden. Er warnt davor, die MMT-Theorie als eine Art Allheilmittel zu betrachten. Er betont die Notwendigkeit, die Anwendung der MMT-Prinzipien an die spezifischen Gegebenheiten eines Landes anzupassen. Zudem weist er darauf hin, dass hohe...

.[embedded content] Many economists — yours truly included — are highly sceptical of the ability of mainstream economics to deliver useful models. Some of us even question the ‘modern’ insistence on modelling — “if it’s not in a model, it’s not economics.” Even if we accept the limitation of only being able to say something about (some kind of) average treatment effects when using instrumental-variables designs, a significant and major problem is that researchers who use these...

Manipulability — Pearl vs Rubin (wonkish) Pearl asserts, while some RCM (Rubin Causal Models) theorists deny, that so-called “non-manipulable” variables can be causes (Pearl 2019; Holland 1986, 2008). Race and gender, which arguably cannot be experimentally manipulated, are key examples of such variables … My response is that although advocates of the frameworks adopt conflicting positions regarding certain variables, these positions are not forced upon...

Cancel Culture — Angriff auf die Pressefreiheit .[embedded content] Ein besorgniserregender Aspekt des Wokismus ist seine Besessenheit von Viktimisierung. Die Wokisten konzentrieren sich auf kollektive Viktimisierung anstelle des Individuums. Sie klassifizieren Individuen nach ihrer Zugehörigkeit zu Identitätsgruppen und weisen ihnen einen Opferstatus gemäß diesen Kriterien zu. Diese Herangehensweise reduziert Individuen auf ihre Gruppenidentität und...