Lars P. Syll

Postmodern discourse mumbo jumbo The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent...

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Ultimatum games — take your epsilon and shove it! Given that a normative theory is defined as a theory prescribing how a rational agent should act, neoclassical economic theory certainly has to be considered a normative theory. The problem is — besides that it standardly assumes not only rationality and selfishness, but also e. g. common knowledge of people’s utility functions — that loads of research show that people almost never act in accordance with the theory: There is a tendency...

When I’m 104 (private) [h/t Jeanette Meyer]

The financial crisis of 2007-08 hit most laymen and economists with surprise. What was it that went wrong with our macroeconomic models, since they obviously did not foresee the collapse or even make it conceivable? There are many who have ventured to answer this question. And they have come up with a variety of answers, ranging from the exaggerated mathematization of economics, to irrational and corrupt politicians. But the root of our problem goes much deeper. It ultimately goes back to...

Ein Volk schreibt Geschichte  [embedded content] Time for a new sojourn in my second hometown — Berlin.

Gretl and Hansl — econometrics made easy Thanks to Allin Cottrell and Riccardo Lucchetti we today have access to a high quality tool for doing and teaching econometrics — Gretl. And, best of all, it is totally free! Gretl is up to the tasks you may have, so why spend money on expensive commercial programs? The latest snapshot version of Gretl – 2015d – can be downloaded here. With this new version also comes a handy primer on Hansl — the scripting language of Gretl. So just go ahead. With...

Econometrics and the dangers of calling your pet cat a dog The assumption of additivity and linearity means that the outcome variable is, in reality, linearly related to any predictors … and that if you have several predictors then their combined effect is best described by adding their effects together … This assumption is the most important because if it is not true then even if all other assumptions are met, your model is invalid because you have described it incorrectly. It’s a bit...

Econometric beasts of bias In an article posted earlier on this blog — What are the key assumptions of linear regression models? — yours truly tried to argue that since econometrics doesn’t content itself with only making “optimal” predictions,” but also aspires to explain things in terms of causes and effects, econometricians need loads of assumptions — and that most important of these are additivity and linearity. Let me take the opportunity to elaborate a little more on why I find these...

Economics journals — publishing lazy non-scientific work In a new paper, Andrew Chang, an economist at the Federal Reserve and Phillip Li, an economist with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, describe their attempt to replicate 67 papers from 13 well-regarded economics journals … Their results? Just under half, 29 out of the remaining 59, of the papers could be qualitatively replicated (that is to say, their general findings held up, even if the authors did not arrive at the...