Lars P. Syll

The limitations of RCTs (wonkish) Yours truly is extremely fond of science philosophers and economists like Nancy Cartwright and Angus Deaton. With razor-sharp intellects they immediately go for the essentials. They have no time for bullshit. And neither should we: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been sporadically used in economic research since the negative income tax experiments between 1968 and 1980 … and have been regularly used since then to...

That a country that has given us presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, is going to be run by a witless clown like Donald Trump is an absolute disgrace. Tuesday, November 8th, 2016 — a date which will live in infamy.

Hur stora klyftor tål Sverige? Malmö högskola arrangerar Bildningsbaren #3 – ett samtal om ekonomi och ojämlikhet Det talas allt mer om växande ekonomiska klyftor. De i toppen drar iväg från de i botten. Från att ha varit världshistoriens jämlikaste land har Sverige snabbt närmat sig genomsnittet inom OECD – ett genomsnitt där klyftorna också har ökat. I Bildningsbaren #3 pratar vi om de ekonomiska klyftorna och ojämlikhet i dagens Sverige. Sara Granér,...

Eleverna på friskolor får i regel ett högre betyg än vad de presterat på nationella proven jämfört med kommunala skolor. Särskilt stora är skillnaderna i matematik. Enligt Jonas Vlachos, nationalekonom vid Stockholms universitet, kan skillnaden bero på att fristående gymnasium har starkare skäl att sätta högre betyg. – Den enklaste förklaringen är att friskolor har starkare incitament att sätta högre betyg. De är mer beroende av elevunderlaget än vad kommunala skolor är. I...

The economics of stochastic Robinson Crusoes The increasing ascendancy of real business cycle theories of various stripes, with their common view that the economy is best modeled as a floating Walrasian equilibrium, buffeted by productivity shocks, is indicative of the depths of the divisions separating academic macroeconomists … If  these theories are correct, they imply that the macroeconomics developed in the wake of the Keynesian Revolution is well...

On Saturday yours truly had the great pleasure to visit a newly graduated daughter and attend the Stockholm School of Economics graduation ceremony in the Blue Hall. Congratulations Tora!

Why should economics demand what harder sciences do not? Although economics main concern is with aggregates, there has predominated in the discipline an atomistic approach. If you want to know what consumers do, you model the individual consumer behavior and assume it represents the behavior of the typical consumer. The same applies to producers: the theory of the firm is the basis for the aggregate supply function. Moreover, it has been proposed that the...

Intuitive, appealing, and — wrong One of the main functions of System 2 is to monitor and control thoughts and actions “suggested” by System 1 … For an example, here is a simple puzzle. Do not try to solve it but listen to your intuition: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? A number came to your mind. The number, of course, is 10: 10 cents. The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it...

What is wrong with neoclassical economics? Noah Smith writes that when yours truly and other heterodox economists criticize neoclassical economics the term “neoclassical” gets slung around quite a lot, usually as a perjorative (sic!) … The idea is that “neoclassical” econ is the dominant paradigm, and that the “heterodox” schools are competing paradigms that lost out, and were, to use Kuhn’s terminology, “simply read out of the profession…and subsequently...

Teaching economics — a question of waste and harm Amos Tversky once told me about a meeting he had attended with the foremost psychological scholars in the U.S., including Leon Festinger. At one point they were all asked to identify what they saw as the most important current problem in psychology. Festinger’s answer was: “Excessive ambitions”. In this paper I argue that this is not just the case for psychology, but for the social sciences across the board...