Lars P. Syll

Krugman — a Vichy Left coward Paul Krugman’s recent posts have been most peculiar. Several have looked uncomfortably like special pleading for political figures he likes, notably Hillary Clinton. He has, in my judgement, stooped rather far down in attacking people well below him in the public relations food chain … Perhaps the most egregious and clearest cut case is his refusal to address the substance of a completely legitimate, well-documented article by David Dayen outing Krugman, and...

Thatcher policies for dummies

What is Post Keynesian economics?  [embedded content]

Deduction — induction — abduction In science – and economics – one could argue that there basically are three kinds of argumentation patterns/schemes/methods/strategies available: Deduction Premise 1: All Chicago economists believe in REH Premise 2: Robert Lucas is a Chicago economist —————————————————————– Conclusion: Robert Lucas believes in REH Here we have an example of a logically valid deductive inference. In a hypothetico-deductive reasoning — hypothetico-deductive confirmation in...

‘New Keynesian’ DSGE models In the model [Gali, Smets and Wouters, Unemployment in an Estimated New Keyesian Model (2011)] there is perfect consumption insurance among the members of the household. Because of separability in utility, this implies that consumption is equalized across all workers, whether they are employed or not … Workers who find that they do not have to work are unemployed or out of the labor force, and they have cause to rejoice as a result. Unemployed workers enjoy...

On the non-neutrality of money Paul Krugman has repeatedly over the years argued that we should continue to use neoclassical hobby horses like IS-LM and Aggregate Supply-Aggregate Demand models. Here’s one example: So why do AS-AD? … We do want, somewhere along the way, to get across the notion of the self-correcting economy, the notion that in the long run, we may all be dead, but that we also have a tendency to return to full employment via price flexibility. Or to put it differently,...

Additivity — a dangerous assumption The unpopularity of the principle of organic unities shows very clearly how great is the danger of the assumption of unproved additive formulas. The fallacy, of which ignorance of organic unity is a particular instance, may perhaps be mathematically represented thus: suppose f(x) is the goodness of x and f(y) is the goodness of y. It is then assumed that the goodness of x and y together is f(x) + f(y) when it is clearly f(x + y) and only in special cases...

Axiomatic economics — the Bourbaki-Debreu delusion By the time that we have arrived at the peak first climbed by Arrow and Debreu, the central question boils down to something rather simple. We can phrase the question in the context of an exchange economy, but producers can be, and are, incorporated in the model. There is a rather arid economic environment referred to as a purely competitive market in which individuals receive signals as to the prices of all goods. All the individuals have...

Till Fadime Sahindal, född 2 april 1975 i Turkiet, mördad 21 januari 2002 i Sverige I Sverige har vi länge okritiskt omhuldat en ospecificerad och odefinierad mångkulturalism. Om vi med mångkulturalism menar att det med kulturell tillhörighet och identitet också kommer specifika moraliska, etiska och politiska rättigheter och skyldigheter, talar vi om normativ multikulturalism. Att acceptera normativ mångkulturalism, innebär att också tolerera oacceptabel intolerans, eftersom den normativa...

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