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description= 15 posts published by Lars Syll during September 2021;
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Text of the page (random words):
wer those who want to throw out reference and representation along with any concept of truth fare when the meeting is ended truth being apparently purely a matter of convention or power and purely internal to theory and nothing to do with representation of some external reality it will of course be easy for the anti realists to change the conventions and leave through the so called solid walls rather than through the doors of realist orthodoxy and to add a dash of bachelard we shall see the difference between the nocturnal philosophies of the idealists and their diurnal realism when at the end of the meeting they sheepishly leave by the door andrew sayer share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky postmodern undecidability 29 sep 2021 at 13 26 posted in theory of science methodology 1 comment for the idealist the fact that the inuit have many words for snow while the bush people of the kalahari desert have none is merely a function of their different languages and has nothing to do with any extra discursive reality however those who claim that reality is a discursive construct don t believe what they say for their practice for example avoiding extra discursive dangers such as oncoming cars shows that they cannot make the world a slave to their discourses part of the function of communicative action and associated material acts is to indicate which of those many possible meanings apply in a given situation when we read a final demand for payment of our electricity bill and the accompanying threat of disconnection we could play endless parlour games running through diverse constructions of what this text says showing off our ability to construe it in imaginative ways never theless which of the many possible meanings is supposed to apply is usually pretty clear if it isn t it might register when the lights go out share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky statistics and econometrics science building on fantasy worlds 28 sep 2021 at 11 04 posted in statistics econometrics 2 comments in econometrics one often gets the feeling that many of its practitioners think of it as a kind of automatic inferential machine input data and out comes casual knowledge this is like pulling a rabbit from a hat great but first you have to put the rabbit in the hat and this is where assumptions come into the picture the assumption of imaginary super populations is one of the many dubious assumptions used in modern econometrics as social scientists and economists we have to confront the all important question of how to handle uncertainty and randomness should we define randomness with probability if we do we have to accept that to speak of randomness we also have to presuppose the existence of nomological probability machines since probabilities cannot be spoken of and actually to be strict do not at all exist without specifying such system contexts accepting a domain of probability theory and sample space of infinite populations also implies that judgments are made on the basis of observations that are actually never made infinitely repeated trials or samplings never take place in the real world so that cannot be a sound inductive basis for a science with aspirations of explaining real world socio economic processes structures or events it s not tenable and as if this wasn t enough one could as we ve seen also seriously wonder what kind of populations these statistical and econometric models ultimately are based on why should we as social scientists and not as pure mathematicians working with formal axiomatic systems without the urge to confront our models with real target systems unquestioningly accept models based on concepts like the infinite super populations used in e g the potential outcome framework that has become so popular lately in social sciences the theory requires that the data be embedded in a stochastic framework complete with random variables probability distributions and unknown parameters however the data often arrive without benefit of randomness in such cases the investigators may still wish to separate effects of the causes they wish to study or are trying to detect from accidental occurrences due to the many other circumstances which they cannot control what can they do usually they follow fisher 1922 into a fantasy world by constructing a hypothetical infinite population of which the actual data are regarded as constituting a random sample unfortunately this fantasy world is often harder to understand than the original problem which lead to its invocation david freedman david lane of course one could treat observational or experimental data as random samples from real populations i have no problem with that although it has to be noted that most natural experiments are not based on random sampling from some underlying population which of course means that the effect estimators strictly seen only are unbiased for the specific groups studied but probabilistic econometrics does not content itself with that kind of populations instead it creates imaginary populations of parallel universes and assume that our data are random samples from that kind of infinite super populations but this is actually nothing else but hand waving and it is inadequate for real science as david freedman writes these are convenient fictions nevertheless reliance on imaginary populations is widespread indeed regression models are commonly used to analyze convenience samples the rhetoric of imaginary populations is seductive because it seems to free the investigator from the necessity of understanding how data were generated modelling assumptions made in statistics and econometrics are more often than not made for mathematical tractability reasons rather than verisimilitude that is unfortunately also a reason why the methodological rigour encountered when taking part of statistical and econometric research to a large degree is nothing but deceptive appearance the models constructed may seem technically advanced and very sophisticated but that s usually only because the problems here discussed have been swept under the carpet assuming that our data are generated by coin flips in an imaginary superpopulation only means that we get answers to questions that we are not asking the inferences made based on imaginary superpopulations well they too are nothing but imaginary we should not as already aristotle noted expect more rigour and precision than the object examined allows and in social sciences including economics and econometrics it s always wise to ponder c s peirce s remark that universes are not as common as peanuts share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky why technical fixes will not rescue econometrics 27 sep 2021 at 21 35 posted in statistics econometrics 1 comment on the issue of the various shortcomings of regression analysis and econometrics no one sums it up better than david freedman in his statistical models and causal inference in my view regression models are not a particularly good way of doing empirical work in the social sciences today because the technique depends on knowledge that we do not have investigators who use the technique are not paying adequate attention to the connection if any between the models and the phenomena they are studying their conclusions may be valid for the computer code they have created but the claims are hard to transfer from that microcosm to the larger world regression models often seem to be used to compensate for problems in measurement data collection and study design by the time the models are deployed the scientific position is nearly hopeless reliance on models in such cases is panglossian given the limits to present knowledge i doubt that models can be rescued by technical fixes arguments about the theoretical merit of regression or the asymptotic behavior of specification tests for picking one version of a model over another seem like the arguments about how to build desalination plants with cold fusion and the energy source the concept may be admirable the technical details may be fascinating but thirsty people should look elsewhere causal inference from observational data presents may difficulties especially when underlying mechanisms are poorly understood there is a natural desire to substitute intellectual capital for labor and an equally natural preference for system and rigor over methods that seem more haphazard these are possible explanations for the current popularity of statistical models indeed far reaching claims have been made for the superiority of a quantitative template that depends on modeling by those who manage to ignore the far reaching assumptions behind the models however the assumptions often turn out to be unsupported by the data if so the rigor of advanced quantitative methods is a matter of appearance rather than substance share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky mainstream economics replete with arrant nonsense 27 sep 2021 at 15 13 posted in economics 2 comments mainstream economics is replete with ideas that everyone knows to be true but that are actually arrant nonsense for example everyone knows that aggregate production functions and aggregate measures of the capital stock provide a good way to characterize the economy s supply side over a sufficiently long span specifically one that allows necessary price adjustments to be made the economy will return to a state of full market clearing and the theory of household choice provides a solid justification for downward sloping market demand curves none of these propositions has any sort of empirical foundation moreover each one turns out to be seriously deficient on theoretical grounds nevertheless economists continue to rely on these and similar ideas to organize their thinking about real world economic phenomena no doubt one reason why this situation arises is because the economy is a complicated system that is inherently difficult to understand so propositions like these even though wrong are all that saves us from intellectual nihilism is this state of affairs ever harmful or dangerous one natural source of concern is if dubious but widely held ideas serve as the basis for consequential policy decisions in this note i examine one such idea namely that expected inflation is a key determinant of actual inflation jeremy rudd board of governors of the frs share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky reinstating the gold standard 27 sep 2021 at 08 11 posted in economics 3 comments 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 commodity money has at last passed away before the age of representative money gold has ceased to be a coin a hoard a tangible claim to wealth it has become a much more abstract thing just a standard of value and it only keeps this nominal status by being handed round from time to time in quite small quantities amongst a group of central banks ending the use of fiat money guaranteed by promises for currencies once more backed by gold is not the way out of the present economic crisis far from being the sole prophylactic against the alleged problems of fiat money as the gold bugs maintain a return to gold would only make things far worse so yours truly just as keynes did most certainly rejects any proposals for restoring the gold standard the gold bugs seem to forget that we actually have tried the gold standard before in the era more or less between 1870 and 1930 and with disastrous results implementing a new gold standard today would only lead to a generally falling price level sounds great if you think so read what keynes wrote already ninety years ago in essays in persuasion of course a fall in prices which is the the same thing as a rise in the value of claims on money means that real wealth is transferred from the debtor in favour of the creditor so that a larger proportion of the real assets is represented by the claims of the depositor and a smaller proportion belongs to the nominal owner of the asset who has borrowed in order to buy allowing this debt deflation process the analysis of which was later developed by irving fisher and hyman minsky would land us in a situation where output and wages would fall and unemployment and the real burden of debt would increase the only winners would probably be banks and financial institutes so why would anyone want to reinstate a gold standard the best surmise is probably that it s a question of ideology and politics libertarians and market fundamentalists that advocate a return to gold want to restrict the possibilities of governments to intervene in the economy and even harder than with independent central banks force countries to pursue restrictive economic policies that at all costs keep inflation down still not convinced of why a return to gold is a bad idea then at least remember what keynes wrote in the economic consequences of mr churchill 1925 we stand midway between two theories of economic society the one theory maintains that wages should be fixed by reference to what is fair and reasonable as between classes the other theory the theory of the economic juggernaut is that wages should be settled by economic pressure otherwise called hard facts and that our vast machine should crash along with regard only to its equilibrium as a whole and without attention to the chance consequences of the journey to individual groups the gold standard with its dependence on pure chance its faith in the automatic adjustments and its general regardlessness of social detail is an essential emblem and idol of those who sit in the top tier of the machine i think that they are immensely rash in their comfortable belief that nothing really serious ever happens nine times out of ten nothing really does happen merely a little distress to individuals or to groups but we run a risk of the tenth time and stupid into the bargain if we continue to apply the principles of an economics which was worked out on the hypothesis of laissez faire and free competition to a society which is rapidly abandoning these hypotheses so next time you want to come up with some new idea on how to solve our economic problems with a magic gold bullet remember new economic thinking starts with reading old books why not start with the best there are those written by john maynard keynes share on facebook opens in new window 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