Göran Perssons ord från mitten av 1990-talet ekar fortfarande genom svensk politik. Varje politiskt förslag som kan höja statsskulden bemöts av varningar om hur Sverige på den tiden stod på ruinens brant. Perssons resa till New York, där han enligt egen utsago tvingades gå med mössan i hand till Wall Streets lånehajar och utlova nedskärningar, […]
economics
There is a trade-off in economics (and elsewhere) between rigor and relevance: the more we achieve deductive certainty in our arguments, the less likely it is that we will achieve socially and politically relevant conclusions. This trade-off, as we shall see, is not logically inevitable but, nevertheless, it is rarely avoided in economic theorizing. Sraffian […]
When science shares freely, industry—much more than the public—reaps the rewards.
The post The Public Cost of Private Science appeared first on Nautilus.
Black Friday 1929 market fundamentalist wet dreams of eternal growth took a serious hit. The stock market bubble exploded and crashed. Today we have a stock market situation starting to more and more remind us of that in 1929. Those of us who know Keynes-Fisher-Kindleberger-Minsky-Shiller and have not completely forgotten all about economic history are […]
Hela den här våren har jag väntat på att Magdalena Andersson ska gå från att göra en ”Hillary Clinton” till att göra en ”Joe Biden”. Från att fastna i identitetspolitik, vara kompetent och motståndare till SD – och förlora. Till att kombinera en svidande kritik av hotet mot demokratin med en ekonomisk investeringspolitik som Joe Biden gjort […]
Sometimes, one thinks that the intellectual world should evolve as intelligent people take account of the dissonance between their ideas and the facts before them and adapt their views. I know that doesn’t happen much but it should. I have studied the philosophy of science deeply enough over my student and postgrad days and beyond…
Mainstream economists who want to defend their use of models often quote statistician George Box, saying that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” But the important lesson taken from Box ought to be another quotation from the same paper: “since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly […]
Nationalekonomi som vetenskap har världen över förlorat otroligt mycket i prestige och status under senare år. Inte minst på grund av dess oförmåga att analysera och förklara ekonomiska och finansiella kriser och på grund av dess avsaknad av konstruktiva och hållbara förslag på att ta oss ur dessa kriser. Hur återskapar vi förtroendet för nationalekonomin? […]
One problem in applying skepticism and critical investigation equally is that heterodox and mainstream theories use extremely different methodologies. Generally speaking, mainstream macro uses math, while heterodox macro uses literary text with no math … Which means that if we judge each theory using its own methodology, mainstream macro will have to pass rigorous quantitative […]