Lars P. Syll

Back in 1980 yours truly had the pleasure of studying at University of Vienna. When not studying or visiting Berggase 19, I often listened to this on my Sony Walkman: [embedded content]

.[embedded content] People say time heals all wounds. I wish that was true. But some wounds never heal. Even after thirty years you just have to learn to live with the scars. In memory of Kristina Syll — beloved wife and mother of my son David and daughter Tora. But in dreams, I can hear your name. And in dreams, We will meet again. When the seas and mountains fall And we come to end of days, In the dark I hear a call Calling me there I will go there And back again.

Douter ou ne pas douter … .[embedded content]

Hyman Minsky and the IS-LM obfuscation As a young research stipendiate in the U.S. yours truly had the pleasure and privilege of having Hyman Minsky as a teacher. He was a great inspiration at the time. He still is. The concepts which it is usual to ignore or deemphasize in interpreting Keynes — the cyclical perspective, the relations between investment and finance, and uncertainty, are the keys to an understanding of the full significance of his...

On gender and alcohol Breaking news! Using advanced multiple nonlinear regression models similar to those in recent news stories on alcohol and dairy and more than 3.6M observations from 1997 through 2012, I have found that drinking more causes people to turn into men! Across people drinking 0-7 drinks per day, each drink per day causes the drinker’s probability of being a man to increase by 10.02 percentage points (z=302.2, p<0.0001). Need I say,...

When in Berlin … (personal) If 1988 or 2023 doesn’t matter — visiting Café Einstein Stammhaus is a must.

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Causal inferences — what Big Data cannot give us .[embedded content] The central problem with the present ‘Machine Learning’ and ‘Big Data’ hype is that so many — falsely — think that they can get away with analyzing real-world phenomena without any (commitment to) theory. But — data never speaks for itself.  Data by themselves are useless. Without a prior statistical set-up, there actually are no data at all to process. Clever data-mining tricks are not...

En vanlig missuppfattning när det gäller oönskad variabilitet i bedömningar är att det inte spelar någon roll eftersom slumpfel tar ut varandra. Det stämmer att positiva och negativa fel i en bedömning av samma fall mer eller mindre tar ut varandra och vi kommer att diskutera mer i detalj hur denna omständighet kan utnyttjas för att minska bruset. Men brusiga system gör inte flera bedömningar av samma fall. De gör brusiga bedömningar av olika fall. Om en försäkring har för hög...

Victoria Chick (1936-2023) In Memoriam Sad news has reached us today. One of the leading Post Keynesian economists, Victoria Chick, passed away yesterday at the age of 86. R.I.P.