Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated on this day in 1986. He was an internationalist and the last social-democratic leader to really believe in a world beyond capitalism. JacobinToday’s Social Democrats Should Be More Like Olof PalmeDaniel Suhonen
Read More »Lars P. Syl — Sweden as a case of MMT
Lars Syll schools Douglas Carr (The Hill op-ed) on austerity and the Swedish economy. Lars P. Syll’s BlogSweden as a case of MMTLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Fertility for Income around the world, from Lyman StoneA new report (if you can ignore the overblown headline) looks at the massive Millennium Villages project, promoted by economist Jeffrey Sachs. It spent a *lot* in Ghana (a budget of $27 Million from a variety of sources, including local government and communities) on economic makeovers of selected locales, but did not have an overall effect on poverty, hunger, or many of the other outcomes it set out to improve. Full report here.The...
Read More »Lars P. Syll — My finest hour
Fifteen years ago, Swedish citizens were asked if they wanted to join the eurozone. Of the more than 80 % of registered voters participating in the referendum close to 57 % said NO. Yours truly — unlike the ‘usual suspects’ among establishment economists — participated actively in the fight against the euro — and it’s still something I’m immensely proud of.... Lars P. Syll’s BlogMy finest hourLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University
Read More »Poverty, Crime and Causality
I was bouncing around my twitter feed and landed on this tweet which in turn took me to a paper entiteld Childhood family income, adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: quasi-experimental total population study. The paper appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2014. Here’s the basic summary: Background Low socioeconomic status in childhood is a well-known predictor of subsequent criminal and substance misuse behaviours but the causal...
Read More »The Great Scandinavian Divergence
From @MineforNothing on Twitter comes this chart: Now, we know Finland is in a bit of a mess. A series of nasty supply-side shocks has devastated the economy. When Nokia collapsed in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis, ripping a huge hole in the country's GDP, the government responded with substantial fiscal support. This wrecked its formerly virtuous fiscal position: it switched from a 6% budget surplus to a 4% deficit in one year, and although its deficit has improved slightly since,...
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