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Pickwickian economics | LARS P. SYLL
Mill provides a good illustration of the tension between fallibilism and anti-foundationalism. Mill’s first principles are supposed to be empirical and not necessary truths, but for economics to be an empirical subject at all, they have to be beyond genuine doubt, since they provide the only empirical element in an otherwise deductive system. The certainty…
Wachstum und Demokratie | LARS P. SYLL
Da liegt die bang bis hoffnungsvoll gestellte Frage nahe: Gibt es Wohlstand auch ohne Wachstum? Und die erste, die knappe Antwort der Ökonomen lautet: Nein. Auf Dauer gibt es in unserem System keinen allgemeinen Wohlstand, ohne dass die Wirtschaft wächst. Auch wenn sie stagniert, geht der Wettbewerb im Inneren weiter, weil der Kapitalismus nicht einfach…
Allt — och lite till — du vill veta om Karl Marx | LARS P. SYLL
Socialismens ABC är en fördjupningspodd från Katalys. Den inledande serien -- där bland andra Sven-Eric Liedman, professor emeritus i idé- och lärdomshistoria, medverkar -- fokuserar på Karl Marx liv och idéarv. Få tänkare har haft ett så genomgripande inflytande på världen som Karl Marx. Trots att det har gått över två sekler sedan hans födelse…
Angelus Novus | LARS P. SYLL
A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. When we perceive…
Science, Politics, and Ideology in Economics | LARS P. SYLL
During my whole career, I have considered myself somewhat of a schizophrenic, which might be a universal characteristic. On the one hand, I was interested in science qua science, and I have tried -- successfully I hope -- not to let my ideological viewpoints contaminate my scientific work. On the other, I felt deeply concerned…
Nattvarden | LARS P. SYLL
. I programmet Text och musik med Eric Schüldt — som sänds på söndagsförmiddagarna i P2 — kan man lyssna på seriös musik och en programledare som verkligen har något att säga och inte bara låter ljudrummet dränkas i den kommersiella radions tyckmyckentrutade ordbajseri och pubertalflams. Som så ofta de senaste åren är det den eminente…
Mainstream economics — kick it over! | LARS P. SYLL
The more I learned about economics, the more I discovered a landscape that is surpassingly strange. Like the land of Mordor, it is dominated by a single theoretical edifice that arose like a volcano early in the 20th century and still dominates the landscape. The edifice is based upon a conception of human nature that…
An influential economist and public intellectual | LARS P. SYLL
Today, one of my economics students kindly shared with me the response she received from a well-known AI chatbot to a question she had posed: The most influential heterodox Swedish economist today is undoubtedly Lars Pålsson Syll, a leading critic of mainstream neoclassical economics and a prominent voice in Post-Keynesian, institutionalist, and pluralist economic thought. Here’s why he…
The importance of students’ questions | LARS P. SYLL
To me, this all emphasises the importance of students' questions. That's why I celebrate students asking searching questions, the questions that arise from them not simply accepting what we say, but wanting to know why, and where it came from; the questions that might sound innocent but turn out to be deep. Incidentally, this is…
Keynes on laissez-faire economics | LARS P. SYLL
The parallelism between economic laissez-faire and Darwinianism ... is very close indeed. Darwin invoked sexual love, acting through sexual selection, as an adjutant to natural selection by competition, to direct evolution along lines which should be desirable as well as effective, so the individualist invokes the love of money, acting through the pursuit of profit,…
What MMT actually says | LARS P. SYLL
. One of the most valuable contributions of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)—particularly from a European perspective—is how clearly it exposes the fundamental flaws of the euro experiment. The neoliberal dream of a supranational currency detached from national fiscal sovereignty simply does not align with economic or political reality. In times of crisis, a state must…
Overview of causal inference | LARS P. SYLL
. Good overview -- but one thing one ought to pay more attention to is the following: Even if both sampling and assignment are made in an ideal random way, performing standard randomised experiments only gives you averages. The problem here is that although we may get an estimate of the ‘true’ average causal effect,…
Why almost all mainstream economics is complete rubbish | LARS P. SYLL
. As always, Murphy’s video masterfully distils abstract economic concepts into clear, jargon-free explanations, making complex issues accessible to non-experts and relevant to everyday life. In so-called ‘modern’ macroeconomics—whether in the form of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE), the New Synthesis, New Classical, or 'New Keynesian’ models -- economic variables are treated as if they…
Econometrics — a severe case of mock empiricism | LARS P. SYLL
According to Guy Routh, econometrics is nothing but “mock empiricism, with statistics subjected to econometric torture until they admit to effects of which they are innocent.” Similarly, Mark Blaug in his The Methodology of Economics argued that econometric testing is like “playing tennis with the net down.” Although these are rather harsh judgments, I believe…
Tre “ekonomiexperter” är ute och cyklar | LARS P. SYLL
Givet de omfattande behoven är det inte underligt att allt fler röster höjs för en mer expansiv finanspolitik. Det tidigare överskottsmålet, vars syfte var att skapa en buffert för kommande ekonomiska kriser, har nyligen slopats vilket frigör 20–25 miljarder kronor. Likaså har en ökad statlig upplåning redan aviserats, till exempel vad gäller kärnkraft och försvar. Risken…
Behavioural economics — some critical perspectives | LARS P. SYLL
Behavioral models often take as a starting point a standard economic model and reinterpret the model as a description how the person thinks and feels. Next, an (often compelling) case is made that many of the assumptions are unrealistic because humans cannot perform the difficult mental tasks embodied in the formalism. The mistake or bias…
Olivier Blanchard on ‘mature’ macroeconomics | LARS P. SYLL
Let me state my two main conclusions. First, starting from sharply different views, there has been substantial convergence, both in terms of methodology and in terms of architecture. Second, this convergence has been mostly in the right direction, allowing future research to build on the existing conceptual structure. Put strongly, macroeconomics may have a claim…
Friskolornas vinstuttag | LARS P. SYLL
74 procent av svenskarna tycker att det är ett bra förslag att ”förbjuda företag med vinstsyfte att driva skolor”, visar 2025 års SOM–undersökning från Göteborgs universitet. Nu visar en undersökning från Sveriges lärare, som DN tagit del av i förväg, att det är en ännu större andel av lärarna som är emot att friskolor tillåts ta…
What’s wrong with economics? | LARS P. SYLL
What economics does is to convert open systems into closed systems by excluding 'moves' which would render the system unstable. Dictators 'freeze the frame' by order: economists do it by 'modelling.' They model the world as a giant computer network in which every possible move has been programmed, and anything outside the frame excluded by…
Piketty reinvents the wheel | LARS P. SYLL
Thomas Piketty has finally discovered — mirabile dictu — something called 'unequal exchange'. Impressive, indeed ... But perhaps he should take a look at this 50-year-old book by Arghiri Emmanuel: Or why not have a look at this 25-year-old book by Alf Hornborg:
On Tour (personal) | LARS P. SYLL
Touring again. Guest appearances in Stockholm and Uppsala. Regular blogging to be resumed next week. Visiting our beautiful capital city, yours truly, of course, takes the opportunity to spend some time with my daughter who lives there. [Picture taken twenty-four years ago at our summer residence in the Karlskrona archipelago.]
Two iconoclastic economics professors | LARS P. SYLL
Given that economic pedagogy is unrealistic and that economic research and economics profession have lost credence and trust in solving the problems of people and planet, how can I as an instructor take a few classes for undergrads on the question as to what is the right way of pursuing knowledge and engaging responsibly with…
Till vilket pris ska inflationen bekämpas? | LARS P. SYLL
I verkligheten är bostadsmarknaden otryggare. Arbetsmarknaden är osäkrare. Välfärdsstaten har försvagats. Klimatet förändras snabbt. Samtidigt är de geopolitiska spänningarna större än under kalla kriget. Allt detta påverkar såväl prisbilden som våra allmänna livsvillkor. För att inte tala om våra barns framtid. Mot denna bakgrund behöver vi fråga oss om det är rimligt att det är…
Does it — really — take a model to beat a model? | LARS P. SYLL
When we provide such a critique, we often hear another mantra to which many economists subscribe: 'It takes a model to beat a model.' On the contrary, we believe that it takes facts and observations to beat a model ... If a model fails to answer the problem to which it is addressed, it should…
The dismal failure of mainstream economics | LARS P. SYLL
One line of thought that can be found in Mill is that good methodology consists in investigating significant forces in isolation from all interfering factors. When we have a good understanding of the behavior of all the main forces we can try to see how to put them all together. Thus we need only assume,…
Updating The Methodology of Economics | LARS P. SYLL
Despite its pretensions the mainstream failed to predict, has failed to adequately explain, and continues to fail to appropriately diagnose solutions for the major economic crises of the 21st century: from the Dot-Com collapse of 20012, to the financial crisis of 2008-10 and most recently Covid19 and its aftermath. Syll demonstrates that very little if…
Wir sollten Israels Politik nicht weiter unterstützen | LARS P. SYLL
DIE ZEIT: Friedrich Merz hat der israelischen Regierung vorgeworfen, das Leiden der Zivilbevölkerung in Gaza lasse sich »nicht mehr mit einem Kampf gegen den Terrorismus« begründen. Hat er recht, Herr Segev? Tom Segev: Die Worte von Merz waren noch immer zu mild, zumal sie hier kaum jemand gehört hat. Dieses Verständnis hat Israel nicht verdient.…
Is economics a science? | LARS P. SYLL
. As Cartwright convincingly argues, although economics produces knowledge, it is only partial knowledge -- knowledge useful in specific contexts but not universally generalizable. Mainstream economics certainly aims to be an exact science, but if it is to be considered an exact science it only applies to the ‘small worlds’ that economists know how to…
Behavioural economics — devoted to ideas it is supposedly attacking | LARS P. SYLL
Behavioral economics is still ‘in a relationship’ with orthodox economics and, in a relationship, one makes compromises ... We all know how stubborn the other side in this relationship is: standard economics will always ‘rationalize’ behavior wherever it can and will only recognize ‘irrationality’ when there is clear and convincing evidence of it. Understandably, behavioral…
Return to the gold standard — a seriously bad idea | LARS P. SYLL
Ninety years ago Keynes could congratulate Great Britain on finally having got rid of the biggest ”barbarous relic” of his time -- the gold standard. He lamented that advocates of the ancient standard do not observe how remote it now is from the spirit and the requirement of the age … [T]he long age of…
Har socialdemokratin blivit konservativ? | LARS P. SYLL
Pluralism i alla ära. Debatten ska vara fri, inom de politiska partierna. Men reda borde ändå råda. Rena rama dumheter får gärna rangeras ut. Som när Adrian Pabst i tidskriften Tiden skriver att ”yttrandefriheten förutsätter möjligheten av en gemensam strävan efter objektiv moralisk och metafysisk sanning” ... Eller när Socialdemokraterna lägger sig kloss inpå Tidöregeringens…
Madmen in authority | LARS P. SYLL
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in…
Postmodern agnosticism vs informed skepticism | LARS P. SYLL
Andrew Ross has drawn an analogy between the hierarchical taste cultures (high, middlebrow and popular) familiar to cultural critics, and the demarcation between science and pseudoscience. At a sociological level this is an incisive observation; but at an ontological and epistemological level it is simply mad ... Such epistemological agnosticism simply won't suffice, at least…