Lars P. Syll

 [embedded content] I used to laugh at my kids when they behaved like this when in kindergarten. But I guess most people expect something else from a president … I can’t but grieve for a nation that has given us presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and now is run by a witless clown. An absolute disgrace. div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]>...

Expansionary austerity? You gotta be kidding! [embedded content] [h/t Gabriel Uriarte] div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

Modern economics — pseudo-science based on FWUTV The use of FWUTV — facts with unknown truth values — is, as Paul Romeer noticed in last year’s perhaps most interesting insider critique of mainstream economics, all to often used in macroeconomic modelling. But there are other parts of ‘modern’ economics than New Classical RBC economics that also have succumbed to this questionable practice: Statistical significance is not the same as real-world significance...

Financial crises — no big deal Many say or think that there were problems in the financial system that gave rise to the Great Depression. We’ve looked at that in a systematic way using modern theory. And we found that businesses had all kinds of money to invest, and they didn’t. They increased distributions to owners. Why? The answer is that businesses did not perceive they had profitable investment opportunities. I don’t think financial crises are a big...

‘Modern’ economics — blah blah blah A key part of the solution to the identification problem that Lucas and Sargent (1979) seemed to offer was that mathematical deduction could pin down some parameters in a simultaneous system. But solving the identification problem means feeding facts with truth values that can be assessed, yet math cannot establish the truth value of a fact. Never has. Never will. In practice, what math does is let macro-economists locate...

Building a science of economics for the real world [embedded content] Following the greatest economic depression since the 1930s, Robert Solow in 2010 gave a prepared statement on “Building a Science of Economics for the Real World” for this hearing in the U. S. Congress. According to Solow modern macroeconomics has not only failed at solving present economic and financial problems, but is “bound” to fail. Building microfounded macromodels on “assuming the...

Neoliberalism — an oversold ideology So what’s wrong with the economy? … A 2002 study of United States fiscal policy by the economists Olivier Blanchard and Roberto Perotti found that ‘both increases in taxes and increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending.’ They noted that this finding is ‘difficult to reconcile with Keynesian theory.’ Consistent with this, a more recent study of international data by the...

Tio trasiga teorier om ekonomi Under ett par decennier har jag undersökt företagsvärlden och samhällsekonomins många olika uttryck och avarter. Men det har hela tiden varit något som skavt … Tänk om det var något med själva kartan. Själva teorin och modellen … Snabbt blev det uppenbart för mig att många av teorierna och modellerna bakom den dominerande ekonomiska politiken inte alls var så objektiva, vetenskapligt robusta och okontro-versiella som de ofta...

The most beautiful identity in mathematics  [embedded content] div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

It’s time to tax the Wall Street casino! Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new...