Lars P. Syll

On the importance of pluralism  [embedded content] A good illustration of what makes mainstream economics go astray — lack of pluralism (diversity) and like-minded people who are all wrong …

 [embedded content] Mainstream economics has become increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. The main reason for this irrelevance is the failure of economists to match their deductive-axiomatic methods with their subject. It is — sad to say — a fact that within mainstream economics internal validity is everything and external validity and truth nothing. Why anyone should be interested in that kind of theories and models — as long as mainstream economists...

Noah Smith — ill-informed and misleading Yours truly is far from being alone in criticising Noah Smith’s article on heterodox economics and mathematics (on which I commented yesterday). Tom Palley writes: (1) Pretty much everything Smith charges heterodox economics with can be said about orthodox economics. That’s OK, but in that case we should open the classroom and op-ed pages to a variety of points of view and abandon the neoclassical monopoly. (2)...

Noah Smith — confusing mathematical masturbation with intercourse between research and reality There’s no question that mainstream academic macroeconomics failed pretty spectacularly in 2008 … Many among the heterodox would have us believe that their paradigm worked perfectly well in 2008 and after … This is dramatically overselling the product. First, heterodox models didn’t “predict” the crisis in the sense of an actual quantitative forecast. This is...

Serious academics are full of shit These fun-hating, highfalutin’ smarties have fought to maintain an exclusive and exclusionary scholastic environment since the first Ivory Towers were built … I may be a blogger/reporter/writer/occasional internet loudmouth today, but I also identify as a scientist, and to some degree as a serious academic. What that doesn’t make me is smarter, or more important, or more deserving of respect, than you. What that doesn’t...

On tour again (personal) Guest appearance in Hamburg again.’The Venice of the North’ is today as hip and hot as Berlin. Regular blogging will be resumed next weekend. [embedded content]

On the persistence of science-fiction economics Obscurantism is sustained by the self-interest of non-obscurantist scholars. To be effective, an attack on obscurantism has to be well documented and well argued. Mere diatribes are pointless and sometimes counterproductive. Yet scholars have a greater personal interest in achieving positive results than in exposing the flaws of others, not only because of the reward system of science, but also because...

Representative agent models and the streetlight effect Attempts to rationalize representative consumer models (especially for purposes other than social welfare measurement) may seem like a quixotic endeavor. Macroeconomists (and many applied microeconomists and econometricians) routinely assume the existence of one, seeing it as a necessary (though acceptable) evil required for the sake of tractability. Many mathematical economists are unwilling to accept...

Sverige är en liberal demokrati. Utöver lagarna måste alla här respektera demokrati och mänskliga rättigheter som yttrandefrihet och åsiktsfrihet, jämlikhet och jämställdhet och allas rätt att välja sitt liv – partner, karriär, livsstil. Inget märkligt och ändå så stort att det svindlar. Utanför denna kärna får var och en fritt välja sjal eller kippa, tillbe sin gud eller låta bli, äta fläsk och brännvin eller slippa, fira jul eller newroz … Moralens självutnämnda väktare i...

‘Som ett rastlöst barn om våren’ (personal)  [embedded content] En sång lika stor som livet självt. Oändligt vacker.