Lars P. Syll

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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[embedded content]As always, for you, Jeanette Meyer

‘Deep parameters’ and microfoundations In a post last week, Simon Wren-Lewis was discussing if modern academic macroeconomics is eclectic or not. When it comes to methodology it seems as though his conclusion is that it is not: The New Classical Counter Revolution of the 1970s and 1980s … was primarily a revolution about methodology, about arguing that all models should be microfounded, and in terms of mainstream macro it was completely successful. It also tried to link this to a...

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Axiomatics — the economics fetish Mainstream — neoclassical — economics has become increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. The main reason for this irrelevance is the failure of economists to match their deductive-axiomatic methods with their subject. The idea that a good scientific theory must be derived from a formal axiomatic system has little if any foundation in the methodology or history of science. Nevertheless, it has become almost an article of faith in...

The gussied up economics of Tweedledum and Tweedledee “Of course, there were exceptions to these trends: a few economists challenged the assumption of rational behavior, questioned the belief that financial markets can be trusted and pointed to the long history of financial crises that had devastating economic consequences. But they were swimming against the tide, unable to make much headway against a pervasive and, in retrospect, foolish complacency.” —Paul Krugman, New York Times...

Wren-Lewis and the Rodrik smorgasbord view of economic models In December 2015 yours truly run a series of eight posts on this blog discussing Dani Rodrik‘s Economics Rules (Oxford University Press, 2015). There sure is much in the book I like and appreciate. It is one of those rare examples where a mainstream economist — instead of just looking the other way — takes his time to ponder on the tough and deep science-theoretic and methodological questions that underpin the economics...

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Lennart Schön (1946-2016) In Memoriam Swedish economic historians were deeply saddened to learn of the death earlier this month of professor Lennart Schön. Schön contributed to many areas of Swedish economic history. Most important was his development of a long-run cycles perspective on Swedish industrial society’s history (on which we worked together in a couple of research projects in the 1990s, carrying further the structural analytical tradition of Johan Åkerman, Erik Dahmén and Ingvar...