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Il problema della stabilità nell’economia neoricardiana | LARS P. SYLL
The stability problem in Sraffian economics is the question: will an excess rate of profit in an industry automatically result in a self-correcting adjustment, driving the excess rate of profit in that industry down to the uniform rate in the economy? No, not necessarily, argues Ian Steedman (1984), a writer deeply sympathetic to the Sraffian…
Was Immanuel Kant uns heute zu sagen hat | LARS P. SYLL
Kants Ideen der Aufklärung sind trotz der zahlreichen Kritiken, die an ihnen geäußert wurden, nach wie vor relevant. Die Aufklärung war geprägt von einem Entdeckergeist, der zu neuen Errungenschaften sowohl in der Wissenschaft als auch in der Kultur führte. Anstatt eine enge Weltsicht zu fördern, ermutigte sie die Menschen, Annahmen und religiöse Überzeugungen zu hinterfragen.…
Conversations with heterodox economists | LARS P. SYLL
Jamie Morgan: To a member of the public it must seem weird that it is possible to state, as you do, such fundamental criticism of an entire field of study. The perplexing issue from a third party point of view is how do we reconcile good intention (or at least legitimate sense of self as…
L’incroyable voyage de Shackleton | LARS P. SYLL
Dans le domaine scientifique, le courage consiste à suivre la devise des Lumières et la maxime de Kant : Sapere Aude! Ose penser par toi-même, utiliser ta propre intelligence, avoir le courage de remettre en question 'l’opinion reçue', l’autorité ou l’orthodoxie. Dans notre vie quotidienne, le courage est la capacité d’affronter la peur, comme lorsque,…
Don’t mistake mathematical beauty for truth! | LARS P. SYLL
No, there is nothing wrong with mathematics itself. No, there is nothing wrong with applying mathematics to economics. Mathematics is a valuable tool — one among several — for understanding and explaining economic phenomena. What is wrong, however, is the naïve belief that: math is the only valid tool math is universally and self-evidently applicable…
Till försvar av förskolan | LARS P. SYLL
Inas Alhamwi -- en islamisk 'influencer' med över 150 000 följare på Instagram -- gick häromdagen ut i SvT och hävdade att barn under fem år inte behöver lära sig svenska och att ett enda år i förskolan är tillräckligt för språkinlärning. Vi var nog många framför tv-rutan som reagerade -- inte minst mot bakgrund…
The causes of ‘secular stagnation’ and the loanable funds theory | LARS P. SYLL
What are the causes of secular stagnation? What are the solutions to revive growth and get the U.S. economy out of the doldrums? ... One headline conclusion stands out: the secular stagnation is caused by a heavy overdose of savings ... All these savings end up as deposits, or ‘loanable funds’ (LF), in commercial banks…
Kan sänkta löner lösa arbetslösheten? | LARS P. SYLL
Enligt färsk statistik från SCB fortsätter arbetslösheten i Sverige att stiga från en redan hög nivå och uppgår nu till nästan nio procent. Detta borde vara en tydlig signal om hur illa den ekonomiska politiken fungerar i dag. Trots detta lyser diskussionerna om den oacceptabelt höga arbetslösheten nästan helt med sin frånvaro i medierna. Med…
Reality — a virulent virus afflicting mainstream economics | LARS P. SYLL
An examination of the contributions of famous mainstream economists reveals no clear indication that their work produces rigorous and successful explanations or predictions of real-world phenomena. The situation in physics is markedly different. There, the application of mathematics has often yielded both rigorous and successful explanations and predictions. Of course, the material world is fundamentally…
Göran Persson — arbetarrörelsens stora svikare | LARS P. SYLL
I veckans avsnitt av Starta pressarna försöker Daniel Suhonen, Elisabeth Lindberg och Enna Gerin att tillsammans med Karin Pettersson -- kulturchef på Aftonbladet och författare till den nyutkomna boken Förbannelsen: Hur Sverige fastnade i 90-talet och förlorade framtiden -- reda ut varför så många ledande socialdemokratiska politiker ännu idag är fast i en nyliberal 'tankebur'…
Friedrich Merz — ein total unverschämter Drecksack | LARS P. SYLL
Laut einer Regierungsantwort soll Friedrich Merz über 12.500 Euro für Styling-Dienstleistungen ausgegeben haben – in einer Phase, in der viele Bürger mit steigenden Lebenshaltungskosten zu kämpfen haben. Die Ausgaben wurden aus Parteigeldern gedeckt. Die Ausgaben für Styling in dieser Höhe sind aus mehreren Gründen ein politisches und öffentliches Ärgernis und ein klassisches Beispiel für eine…
Utility theory — explaining everything and nothing | LARS P. SYLL
The methodological structure of mainstream economics often relies on axioms and theorems that are tautological by design, which severely limits their informational content. A prime example is modern expected utility theory. Its core weakness lies in the minimal constraints placed on individual preferences; this extreme flexibility allows the theory to be reconciled with virtually any…
Ger lägre löner fler jobb? | LARS P. SYLL
Fackföreningsekonomen Daniel Lind och ekonomiprofessorn Lars Calmfors har under det senaste året haft en animerad diskussion om forskningen kring 'monopsoni' och 'lägstalöner' i Ekonomisk Debatt och Affärsvärlden. En central tvistefråga i diskussionen mellan Lind och Calmfors gäller lägstalönerna i Sverige. Lind hävdar att höjda lägstalöner inte med nödvändighet behöver leda till färre jobb. Han menar…
Marx and Keynes on the contradictions of capitalism | LARS P. SYLL
Each capitalist, Marx noted, has an ambiguous relation to the workers. On the one hand, she wants the workers she employs to have low wages, since that makes for high profits. On the other hand, she wants all other workers to have high wages, since that makes for high demand for her products. Although it is…
Does the use of models make economics a science? | LARS P. SYLL
Well, if we are to believe most mainstream economists, models are what make economics a science. Economics is uniquely model-oriented among the social sciences. This stems from its history, its emulation of natural sciences like physics, and its pursuit of universal, rigorous explanations based on minimal principles. Mainstream economists seek to explain social phenomena by…
Uncertainty, learning, and rational expectations | LARS P. SYLL
The rational expectations hypothesis presupposes — largely for reasons of internal consistency — that agents possess complete knowledge of all relevant probability distributions. When economists attempt to incorporate learning into these models, it is always in a very restricted sense. Nothing genuinely unanticipated ever occurs; instead, learning is reduced to a mechanical process of updating…
The superiority of economists | LARS P. SYLL
There are several reasons for the insularity of economics, most importantly the different epistemological cultures of the various social science disciplines and the power inequalities between them. First, the theory of action that comes with economists’ analytical style is hardly compatible with the basic premise of much of the human sciences, namely that social processes…
Truth and justice — things worth figting for | LARS P. SYLL
Truth and justice are the essential foundations of any legitimate political order—not merely moral abstractions. Deny truth, and you replace reason with power. Abandon justice, and you permit domination to thrive. This is vividly clear in Gaza and Ukraine, where truth and justice are shown to be not distant ideals but concrete conditions for peace.…
Confusing statistical fiction with reality | LARS P. SYLL
With the above cautions in mind, we may view each statistical analysis as a thought experiment in a fictional “small world” or “toy example” sharply restricted by its simplifying assumptions. The questions that motivated the study must be translated properly into this fictional world; statistical methods then answer the questions via mathematical deductions from the…
Econometrics — the hope that never came true | LARS P. SYLL
In 1958, with the publication of the twenty-fifth volume of Econometrica, Trygve Haavelmo assessed the role of econometrics in advancing economics. While he praised its ‘repair work’ and ‘clearing-up work,’ he also found reason for despair: We have found certain general principles which would seem to make good sense. Essentially, these principles are based on…
Habermas’ fundamental objections to Adorno & Horkheimer | LARS P. SYLL
The conflicting attitude towards Nietzsche is instructive. It indicates that the Dialectic of Enlightenment owes more to Nietzsche than just the strategy of a totalizing critique. It is still difficult to understand a certain carelessness in their treatment of, to put it quite blatantly, the achievements of Western rationalism. How can the two advocates of…
Why yours truly is not a Bayesian | LARS P. SYLL
Imagine you are a Bayesian turkey. You hold a nonzero prior belief in the hypothesis (H): People are nice vegetarians who would never eat a turkey. Every day I see the sun rise is further confirmation of this fact. Each day you survive and are not eaten constitutes new evidence (e). You dutifully update your…
Sweden’s turn to economic inequality | LARS P. SYLL
UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 reveals that Sweden — once a global beacon of equality — has now fallen to the far less enviable position of sixth place among the world’s most unequal countries in terms of wealth. How could things have gone so wrong for a country that, not so long ago, was seen…
Axel Honneth’s objections to Adorno & Horkheimer | LARS P. SYLL
The influence of the basic themes of the philosophy of history on the social-theoretic argument of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is so strong that Adorno and Horkheimer cannot but comprehend the socially oppressed subject as a passive and intention-less victim of the same techniques of domination that are aimed at nature. It seems as if…
Hunting for causes | LARS P. SYLL
There are three fundamental differences between statistical and causal assumptions. First, statistical assumptions, even untested, are testable in principle, given sufficiently large sample and sufficiently fine measurements. Causal assumptions, in contrast, cannot be verified even in principle, unless one resorts to experimental control ... Second, statistical assumptions can be expressed in the familiar language of…
Fact and fiction in statistics | LARS P. SYLL
As has been long and widely emphasized in various terms ... frequentism and Bayesianism are incomplete both as learning theories and as philosophies of statistics, in the pragmatic sense that each alone are insufficient for all sound applications. Notably, causal justifications are the foundation for classical frequentism, which demands that all model constraints be deduced…
Jürgen Habermas on multiculturalism | LARS P. SYLL
Even if collective rights were compatible with the individualistic design of modern legal orders based on subjective rights, it would not make any sense to employ them for cultural survival projects enforced by state power. There cannot be a "preservation" of cultures in the same sense as most of us advocate the preservation of animals…
What MMT really is about | LARS P. SYLL
MMT is fundamentally a reaction to the way money is described in mainstream economic theory, where money is seen as something that people save by depositing it in banks, and which banks in turn can lend out by creating credit. Thus, the money creation by banks presupposes that private individuals save. But that idea is…
Keynes — a notable exception | LARS P. SYLL
The great difficulty in the social sciences (if we may presume to call them so) of applying scientific method, is that we have not yet established an agreed standard for the disproof of an hypothesis. Without the possibility of controlled experiment, we have to rely on interpretation of evidence, and interpretation involves judgement; we can…
Courage | 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…