Lars P. Syll

Robert Solow on Chicago economics Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the battle of Austerlitz. If I do that, I’m getting tacitly drawn into the game that he is Napoleon. Now, Bob Lucas and Tom Sargent like nothing better than to get drawn into technical discussions, because then you have tacitly gone along with...

My new book now available in paperback This collection of previously published and new papers is a major intervention in the on-going debate about the nature and future of economics. Instead of the present deductivist-formalist orientation of mainstream economics, Lars Syll advocates for the adoption of a more pluralist approach to economics, arguing for more realism and relevance with less insistence on mathematical modeling. This challenging and thought-provoking book will prove a...

Critical realism and scientific explanation ‘Critical realism’ is very similar to the jargon-dense, literary ‘critical theory’ taught in literature departments. Noahpinion One of the most important tasks of social sciences is to explain the events, processes, and structures that take place and act in society. But the researcher cannot stop at this. As a consequence of the relations and connections that the researcher finds, a will and demand arise for critical reflection on the findings....

Woman is the nigger of the world För en tid sedan skrev Sara Mohammad — grundare av Glöm aldrig Pela och Fadime — i en debattartikel på SVT Opinion att hon idag med oro ser hur religiösa krafter flyttar fram sina positioner här i Sverige: Häromveckan gick Storsjöbadet i Österstund ut med att de börjar sälja burkinis, och flera badhus har börjat med skilda badtider för kvinnor och män. Vi är många som flytt från ett kulturellt och religiöst förtryck med krav på kontroll av kvinnors...

Bayes vs. Keynes on probability and belief in economic theory An alternative possibility is to accept the consequences of the apparent fact that the central prediction of the Bayesian model in its descriptive capacity, that people’s choices are or are ‘as if’ they are informed by real-valued subjective probabilities, is, in general, false … According to Keynes’s decision theory it is rational to prefer to be guided by probabilities determined on the basis of greater evidential ‘weight’,...

 [embedded content] Yes, indeed, looking out through my library windows in to The Magistrate’s Park, the sky is grey, rain keeps falling, and Spring seems to be far, far, away. Although it’s more than thirty years now since I was a student at the University of California, on a day like this, I sure wish I was there again …

Can an endless series reach its limit?  [embedded content] [embedded content]

Poupée de cire, poupée de son  [embedded content] France Gall. Une fille-femme merveilleuse. Magnifique.  [embedded content] ‘C’est comme toute l’histoire du peuple noir qui se balance entre l’amour et l’désespoir.’

A spoonful of happiness  [embedded content] Still makes me happy after 50 years!

Ergodicity and the law of large numbers (wonkish) If n identical trials A occurs v times, and if n is very large, then v/n should be near the probability p of A …This is one form of the law of large numbers and serves as a basis for the intuitive notion of probability as a measure of relative frequencies … It is usual to read into the law of large numbers things which it definitely does not imply. If Peter and Paul toss a perfect coin 10 000 times, it is customary to expect that Peter will...