Lars P. Syll

BBC report on the need for rethinking economics and the way we teach it.

Time — a question of life and death It is thus seen that the time-dimension is completely ignored in spite of its crucial role in problems of this sort. For let us assume, for example, that the probability of some event E in a stochastic structure of outcomes is 1/10 000. Small though this probability is, there is a very high probability, 1-1/10000000000, that E should occur at least once in 230 000 outcomes. Now, if one outcome occurs every second, we need be willing to wait only three...

These brothers and sisters of mine 5 million Syrians are refugees. [embedded content] Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’...

Walrasian economic theory — little better than nonsense You enquire whether or not Walras was supposing that exchanges actually take place at the prices originally proposed when the prices are not equilibrium prices. The footnote which you quote convinces me that he assuredly supposed that they did not take place except at the equilibrium prices … All the same, I shall hope to convince you some day that Walras’ theory and all the others along those lines are little better than nonsense!...

Logistic regression (student stuff)  [embedded content] And in the video below (in Swedish) yours truly shows how to perform a logit regression using Gretl.[embedded content]

Pedagogik — ett ämne i kris Den antiintellektuella avgrunden är nära när den postmoderna sanningsrelativismen infekterar det offentliga samtalet på alla nivåer, inklusive den akademiska världen. I Sverige tycks den pedagogiska disciplinen vara värst smittad. En docent i pedagogik fick för några år sedan Skolverkets uppgift att skriva en rapport om fysikundervisningen i den svenska skolan, samt komma med förslag på hur den skulle attrahera fler flickor. Ur rapporten: ”Föreställningen om det...

There ain’t no cure  [embedded content]

Top 10 economics blog posts Dumb and dumber in modern macroeconomics Why Paul Krugman is no real Keynesian Dani Rodrik’s blind spot Robert Lucas, rational expectations, and the understanding of business cycles The blatant absence of empirical fit of macroeconomic models Non-ergodic economics, expected utility and the Kelly criterion Greg Mankiw makes a fool of himself — again Is macroeconomics for real? Please say after me – Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu James Heckman — the ultimate take down...

This one is for you — all you brothers and sisters, struggling to survive in civil wars, or forced to flee your homes, risking your lives on your way to my country — Sweden — or other countries in Europe. May God be with you. [embedded content]

‘New Keynesianism’ — an unpleasant macroeconomic fairy-tale The so-called new-Keynesian (or NK) model, has emerged and become a workhorse for policy and welfare analysis … The model starts from the RBC model without capital, and, in its basic incarnation, adds only two imperfections. It introduces monopolistic competition in the goods market. The reason is clear: If the economy is going to have price setters, they better have some monopoly power. It then introduces discrete nominal price...