Lars P. Syll

The limits of statistical inference Causality in social sciences — and economics — can never solely be a question of statistical inference. Causality entails more than predictability, and to really in depth explain social phenomena require theory. Analysis of variation — the foundation of all econometrics — can never in itself reveal how these variations are brought about. First when we are able to tie actions, processes or structures to the statistical relations detected, can we say that...

Critical realism and mathematics in economics [embedded content] Interesting lecture, but I think just listening to what Tony Lawson or yours truly have to say, shows how unfounded and ridiculous is the idea that many mainstream economists have that because heterodox people often criticize the application of mathematics in mainstream economics, we are critical of math per se. [embedded content] Indeed. No, there is nothing wrong with mathematics per se. No, there is nothing wrong with...

Are all models wrong? If you say “All models are wrong” then the most important issue is to define the words. “All” is quite clear, “are” also is without much doubt. So, we are left with “models” and “wrong” … The more interesting discussion is the one about the definition of truth. The philosopher Bertrand Russell has written something on truth about a century ago in his book The Problems of Philosophy (ch. XII): “It will be seen that minds do not create truth or falsehood. They create...

Validity is NOT enough Mainstream economics today is in the story-telling business whereby economic theorists create make-believe analogue models of the target system – usually conceived as the real economic system. This modeling activity is considered useful and essential. Since fully-fledged experiments on a societal scale as a rule are prohibitively expensive, ethically indefensible or unmanageable, economic theorists have to substitute experimenting with something else. To understand...

 [embedded content] And if you want to know more on science and inference, the one book you should read is Peter Lipton‘s Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd ed, Routledge, 2004). A truly great book. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive bibliography on Inference to the Best Explanation, “Lord Keynes” has a good one here. [And for those who read Swedish, I self-indulgently recommend this.]

Utility — an almost vacuous concept There is always a danger that, as you climb higher and higher, the principles become more and more general and harder and harder to translate into lower level operational principles … The economic notion of Utility looks dangerously general in the hands of, for example, Gary Becker. Becker won the Nobel Prize for modeling great swathes of what we do in day-to-day life under the principles of market equilibrium and rational choice theory, from drug...

Keeping one’s distance Only by the recognition of distance in our neighbour is strangeness alleviated: accepted into consciousness. The presumption of undiminished nearness present from the first, however, the flat denial of strangeness, does the other supreme wrong, virtually negates him as a particular human being and therefore the humanity in him, ‘counts him in,’ incorporates him in the inventory of property. Wherever immediateness posits and entrenches itself, the bad mediateness of...

Razor-sharp intellects immediately go for the essentials. They have no time for bullshit. And neither should we. In Evidence: For Policy Nancy Cartwright has assembled her papers on how better to use evidence from the sciences “to evaluate whether policies that have been tried have succeeded and to predict whether those we are thinking of trying will produce the outcomes we aim for.” Many of the collected papers center around what can and cannot be inferred from results in well-done...

Rational expectations — a theory without empirical content Cassidy: What about the rational-expectations hypothesis, the other big theory associated with modern Chicago? How does that stack up now? Heckman: I could tell you a story about my friend and colleague Milton Friedman. In the nineteen-seventies, we were sitting in the Ph.D. oral examination of a Chicago economist who has gone on to make his mark in the world. His thesis was on rational expectations. After he’d left, Friedman...

My first love (private)  [embedded content]