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Postmodernism — a smokescreen for sloppy research | LARS P. SYLL
If postmodernism evaporates in the face of conditions that no one seems to want to dispute, then why bother putting so much effort into critically examining it? Isn’t that a redundant exercise? No, it is not, because even though most historians in their daily work proceed as if it were possible to discover the real…
Hemlighetsmakeriet som sprack till slut | LARS P. SYLL
I måndags förra veckan avslöjade Expo att en minister i regeringen har en nära anhörig med bakgrund i våldsbejakande högerextrema kretsar Det statsråd det handlar om är migrationsminister Johan Forssell (M), vars son har kopplingar till högerextrema organisationer. Som Expressen var först med att rapportera om har Vänsterpartiet nu kallat Forssell till riksdagen för att…
A courageous student | LARS P. SYLL
In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude! To use your own understanding, having the courage to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is a capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not…
Ertrinken wir in Schulden? | LARS P. SYLL
Die Koalition gefährdet mit ihrem Haushalt die finanzielle Stabilität, sagt der Wirtschaftsprofessor Lars Feld, der Christian Lindner beraten hat. Jens Südekum, der Berater von Lars Klingbeil, entgegnet: Deutschland muss ins Risiko gehen. ZEIT: Das Institut für Weltwirtschaft in Kiel hat errechnet, dass die Schuldenquote bis zum Jahr 2040 auf bis zu 118 Prozent des Brutto-inlandsprodukts…
Uncertainty, learning, and rational expectations | LARS P. SYLL
The rational expectations hypothesis assumes—primarily for reasons of internal consistency—that agents possess complete knowledge of all relevant probability distribution functions. When attempts are made to incorporate learning into these models, often in response to longstanding criticism, it is invariably a highly constrained form of learning. This type of learning excludes the truly unexpected or surprising.…
Keynes’ caution on economic models | LARS P. SYLL
The object of our analysis is, not to provide a machine, or method of blind manipulation, which will furnish an infallible answer, but to provide ourselves with an organized and orderly method of thinking out particular problems; and, after we have reached a provisional conclusion by isolating the complicating factors one by one, we then…
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism | LARS P. SYLL
. When criticism of Israeli policy is reflexively labeled as antisemitic, it stifles legitimate discourse and makes meaningful accountability nearly impossible. Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism is not only intellectually dishonest -- it also risks trivializing the seriousness of actual antisemitism, a dangerous and persistent form of hatred that must be addressed with unwavering clarity and…
The possibility of the impossibility of economics | LARS P. SYLL
Economic models are not expected to be even approximately true, and Hausman’s idea that even the ceteris paribus laws in economics are vague as to what exactly has to be equal makes it clear that economic laws must be abstract rather than idealized. This leads us to the question: What are the criteria of, if…
The problem of unjustified assumptions | LARS P. SYLL
An ongoing concern is that excessive focus on formal modeling and statistics can lead to neglect of practical issues and to overconfidence in formal results ... Analysis interpretation depends on contextual judgments about how reality is to be mapped onto the model, and how the formal analysis results are to be mapped back into reality.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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:
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…