Lars P. Syll

Bootstrapping and The Münchhausen Trilemma The Münchhausen Trilemma is a term used in epistemology to stress the impossibility to prove any truth even in the fields of logic and mathematics. The name Münchhausen Trilemma was coined by the German philosopher Hans Albert in 1968 in reference to a Trilemma of “dogmatism vs. infinite regress vs. psychologism” used by Karl Popper; it is a reference to the problem of “bootstrapping”, after the story of Baron Münchhausen, pulling himself and the...

Dani Rodrik and not so transparent user’s guides to models (V) In Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules it is argud that ‘the multiplicity of models is economics’ strength,’ and that a science that has a different model for everything is non-problematic, since economic models are cases that come with explicit user’s guides — teaching notes on how to apply them. That’s because they are transparent about their critical assumptions and behavioral mechanisms. Hmm … That really is at odds with yours...

Dani Rodrik disses rethink economics students (IV) Economics students today are complaining more and more about the way economics is taught. The lack of fundamantal diversity — not just path-dependent elaborations of the mainstream canon — and narrowing of the curriculum, dissatisfy econ students all over the world. The frustrating lack of real world relevance has led many of them to demand the discipline to start develop a more open and pluralistic theoretical and methodological attitude....

Radikal? Ja! Neoklassiker? Nej! De flesta vetenskaper ägnar sig åt teoretiska förenklingar av något slag. Det tror jag inte någon ifrågasätter. Vad frågan gäller är vad för slags teoretiska förenklingar man jobbar med. Och just här är kontrasten mellan ekonomisk teori och till exempel fysiken frapperande. Där fysiken kan göra både materiella och ideella ”galileiska experiment” (om galileiska experiment kan man läsa i vetenskapsteoretikern Nancy Cartwrights Hunting Causes and Using Them:...

Econometrics — playing tennis with the net down Suppose you test a highly confirmed hypothesis, for example, that the price elasticity of demand is negative. What would you do if the computer were to spew out a positive coefficient? Surely you would not claim to have overthrown the law of demand … Instead, you would rerun many variants of your regression until the recalcitrant computer finally acknowledged the sovereignty of your theory … Only the naive are shocked by such soft and gentle...

A room with a view (personal)   After almost forty years in Lund, yours truly last year returned to the town where he was born and bred — Malmö. Living on the top floor of this grandiose building, next to The Magistrate’s Park, and with The Opera and The Municipal Art Gallery just across the street, always convinces me returning was a good decision …

Dani Rodrik’s pseudo-pluralism (III) In Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules the proliferation of economic models during the last twenty-thirty years is presented as a sign of great diversity and abundance of new ideas: Rather than a single, specific model, economics encompasses a collection of models … Economics is in fact, a collection of diverse models that do not have a particular ideological bent or lead to a unique conclusion … The possibilities of social life are too diverse to be squeezed...

 [embedded content] Yes, indeed, all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey, when I look outside my library windows. Although it’s more than thirty years now since I lived in California, on a day like this, I sure wish I was there again …

Nu krävs en expansiv finanspolitik Yours truly, Lars Ahnland och Rodney Edvinsson skrev häromdagen i Svenska Dagbladet om behovet av nytänk inom penningpolitiken. Hans Palmstierna och Martin Moraeus kommenterade ett par dagar senare artikeln. Igår skrev vi i vår slutreplik: Sverige befinner sig i dag i en situation som är obehagligt lik en likviditetsfälla. I en sådan blir penningpolitiken verkningslös eftersom företagen slutar att låna till investeringar och istället amorterar sina...

Dani Rodrik’s blind spot (II) As I argued in a previous post, Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules  describes economics as a more or less problem-free smorgasbord collection of models. Economics is portrayed as advancing through a judicious selection from a continually expanding library of models, models that are presented as “partial maps” or “simplifications designed to show how specific mechanisms  work.” But one of the things that’s missing in Rodrik’s view of economic models is the...