Lars P. Syll

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The limits of DAG formalism There are good reasons to think that moderating causes have an important role general in explaining development and growth. Why? The growth process is apparently strongly affected by what economists call complementarities. Complementarities exist when the action of an agent or the existence of practice affects the marginal benefit to another agent taking an action or to the marginal benefit of another practice. Education is...

Normative multiculturalism and the paradox of tolerance Culture, identity, ethnicity, gender, and religiosity should never be accepted as a basis for intolerance in political and civic aspects. In a modern democratic society, people belonging to these different groups must be able to rely on society to protect them against the abuses of intolerance. All citizens must have the freedom and right to question and leave their own group. Against those who do not...

What is the use of school? We live in an unequal society where inequality is increasing in many areas, especially regarding income and wealth. The differences in living conditions for different groups, in terms of class, ethnicity, and gender, are unacceptably large. In the world of education, family background still has a significant impact on pupils’ performance, and it becomes even more pronounced as they get older. It cannot be seen as anything other...

Dumb and Dumber — the Chicago economics version A couple of years ago, Robert Lucas gave an outline of what the new classical school of macroeconomics thought about the latest downturns in the US economy and its future prospects. After stating his view that the US recession that started in 2008 was basically caused by a run for liquidity, Lucas then goes on to discuss the prospect of recovery, maintaining that past experience would suggest an “automatic”...

“I no longer have enough in the tank” .[embedded content]

Mainstream economics non-ideological? I’ll be dipped! Mainstream (neoclassical) economics has always put a strong emphasis on the positivist conception of the discipline, characterizing economists and their views as objective, unbiased, and non-ideological … Acknowledging that ideology resides quite comfortably in our economics departments would have huge intellectual implications, both theoretical and practical. In spite (or because?) of that, the matter...

Religious for-profit ‘free schools’ Swedish governments have for years now announced that they want to tighten the rules for religious for-profit free schools. Last year Minister of Education Lina Axelsson Kihlbom claimed that this would be “an important step in regaining democratic control in schools.” Goodness gracious! And to think that we still have to hear this nonsense. It’s mind-boggling. The fact that religious for-profit free schools are allowed...

When science goes wrong Psychology professor Susan Fiske doesn’t like when people use social media to publish negative comments on published research. She’s implicitly following what I’ve sometimes called the research incumbency rule: that, once an article is published in some approved venue, it should be taken as truth. I’ve written elsewhere on my problems with this attitude — in short, (a) many published papers are clearly in error, which can often be...

Da doo ron ron .[embedded content] Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound masterpiece. And that 1960s choreography! I just love it.