Lars P. Syll

.[embedded content] Courage is a capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not to step back, but to stand up for one’s rights not to be humiliated or abused in any way by the rich and powerful. Courage is to do the right thing in spite of danger and fear. To keep on even if opportunities to turn back are given. Like in the great stories. The ones where people have lots of chances of turning back — but don’t. Dignity, a better life, or justice...

Liz Truss’ trickle-down economics U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss has said she’s ready to make “unpopular decisions” such as tax cuts and boosting bonuses for wealthy bankers to grow the economy, even though they obviously benefit the wealthiest more than the poor … Truss and her conservative government are to give U.K. corporations and shareholders a gift. The only trickle-down to workers to be going on is probably best described in the picture below …...

Science — the need for causal explanation Many journal editors request authors to avoid causal language, and many observational researchers, trained in a scientific environment that frowns upon causality claims, spontaneously refrain from mentioning the C-word (“causal”) in their work … The proscription against the C-word is harmful to science because causal inference is a core task of science, regardless of whether the study is randomized or nonrandomized....

Statistical models and the assumptions on which they build Every method of statistical inference depends on a complex web of assumptions about how data were collected and analyzed, and how the analysis results were selected for presentation. The full set of assumptions is embodied in a statistical model that underpins the method … Many problems arise however because this statistical model often incorporates unrealistic or at best unjustified assumptions …...

Support Vector Machines (student stuff) .[embedded content]

We are calling for a stop to the use of P values in the conventional, dichotomous way — to decide whether a result refutes or supports a scientific hypothesis … The rigid focus on statistical significance encourages researchers to choose data and methods that yield statistical significance for some desired (or simply publishable) result, or that yield statistical non-significance for an undesired result, such as potential side effects of drugs — thereby invalidating...

The gender pay gap and discrimination Spending a couple of hours going through a JEL survey of modern research on the gender wage gap, yours truly was struck almost immediately by how little that research really has accomplished in terms of explaining gender wage discrimination. With all the heavy regression and econometric alchemy used, wage discrimination is somehow more or less conjured away … Trying to reduce the risk of having established only...

How to teach econometrics One way to change the sad state of econometrics — an industry with a huge output but no sales — would perhaps be to follow Ed Leamer’s advice on how to teach it … To take my students on a journey toward real intelligence, I have given them the following assignment: Your boss walks into your office and says, “I read in the newspaper this morning that interest rates are going to increase this year. Is this right, and do I need to...

It may be argued … that the betting quotient and credibility are substitutable in the same sense in which two commodities are: less bread but more meat may leave the consumer as well off as before. If this were, then clearly expectation could be reduced to a unidimensional concept … However, the substitutability of consumers’ goods rests upon the tacit assumption that all commodities contain something — called utility — in a greater or less degree; substitutability is...