Lars P. Syll

Min vän — den sorts människa som Gud inte gjorde någon kopia av År 2018 var — precis som de flesta år — ett år med både glädje och sorg. För mig kommer året ändå alltid att främst förknipppas med att det var året då min bäste vän sedan mer än trettio år  — Bengt Nilsson — gick ur tiden. Inga ord kan riktigt beskriva vad man känner när en människa man älskat inte längre finns där. Man minns skratten, glädjen, omtanken, den mäktiga intelligensen, den...

Resisting the ‘statistical significance testing’ temptation Imagine a dictator “game” in which a mixed-sex group of experimental subjects are used as first players who can decide which share of their initial endowment they give to a second player (one person acts as second player for the whole group). Additionally, assume that the experimental subjects are a convenience sample but not a random sample of a well-defined broader population. What kind of...

Varför är den svenska inflationen så hög? Enligt Elinor Odeberg borde Sverige, precis som en del andra länder, ha agerat mer direkt. Hon tar upp Spanien som ett exempel. – Trots att Spanien hade ett väldigt starkt beroende av rysk energi, till skillnad från Sverige som inte hade någon import av rysk energi att tala om, så har Sverige betydligt högre inflation och högre energipriser. Det beror på att den spanska regeringen valde att sätta pristak och svälja...

The misuse of mathematics in economics Many American undergraduates in Economics interested in doing a Ph.D. are surprised to learn that the first year of an Econ Ph.D. feels much more like entering a Ph.D. in solving mathematical models by hand than it does with learning economics. Typically, there is very little reading or writing involved, but loads and loads of fast algebra is required. Why is it like this? … One reason to use math is that it is easy to...

Chicago economics — garbage in, gospel out Every dollar of increased government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost from the decline in private spending. We can build roads instead of factories, but fiscal stimulus can’t help us to build more of both. This form of “crowding out” is just accounting, and doesn’t rest on any perceptions or behavioral assumptions. John...

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Alice “Ich lasse mir nicht mein Schnitzel weg nehmen” Weidel .[embedded content] Als ob jemand freiwillig das Schnitzel von einem widerlichen rechtspopulistischen Politiker wie Alice Weidel zu tun haben möchte …

Economic methodology — a critical realist perspective The field of economics has long been hailed as a bastion of rationality and objectivity, offering insights into the workings of present-day complex economic systems. However, questions about the foundations of economics and its prevailing methodological approach have to be raised. My own critique challenges traditional assumptions and argues for a more pluralistic and realistic understanding of economic...

The ultimate methodological issue in economics If scientific progress in economics — as Robert Lucas and other latter-day followers of Milton Friedman seem to think — lies in our ability to tell ‘better and better stories’ one would of course expect economics journals to be filled with articles supporting the stories with empirical evidence. However, the journals still show a striking and embarrassing paucity of empirical studies that (try to) substantiate...

Interventionist causes and modularity Modularity is the mark of a type of independence from context. The same functional relationship between variables will hold in a given component of the contributing mechanisms whether or not there is a change in a different component. The total effect may change when different components contribute, but the operation of the modular mechanism will not be changed nor change them. In situations where the presence or...