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description=15 posts published by Lars Syll during January 2025;

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Text of the page (random words):
many 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 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 in statistical and econometric research to a large degree is nothing but a 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 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 vi äro tusenden 26 jan 2025 at 22 09 posted in politics society varia comments off on vi äro tusenden share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky john nash and the limits of game theory 25 jan 2025 at 15 08 posted in economics 1 comment john nash made groundbreaking contributions to game theory particularly through his development of the concept of the nash equilibrium which became a cornerstone of the analysis of strategic interactions in economics late in his life nash however also came to be aware of a fundamental methodological weakness of game theory overemphasizing the reach of instrumental rationality and abstracting away from the influence of non economic factors reduces the analysis to a pure thought experiment without any substantial connection to reality most mainstream economists still think that game theory is useful and can be applied to real life and give important and interesting results that however is a rather unsubstantiated view what game theory does is strictly seen nothing more than investigating the logic of behaviour among non existent robot imitations of humans knowing how those rational fools play games does not help us decide and act when interacting with real people knowing some game theory may actually make us behave in a way that hurts both ourselves and others decision making and social interaction are always embedded in socio cultural contexts not taking account of that game theory will remain an analytical cul de sac that never will be able to come up with useful and relevant explanations over emphasizing the reach of instrumental rationality and abstracting away from the influence of many known to be important factors reduces the analysis to a pure thought experiment without any substantial connection to reality limiting theoretical economic analysis in this way not incorporating both motivational and institutional factors when trying to explain human behaviour makes economics insensitive to social facts game theorists extensively exploit rational choice assumptions in their explanations that is probably also the reason why game theory has not been able to accommodate well known anomalies in its theoretical framework that should hardly come as a surprise to anyone game theory with its axiomatic view of individuals tastes beliefs and preferences cannot accommodate very much of real life behaviour it is hard to find really compelling arguments in favour of us continuing down its barren paths since individuals obviously do not comply with or are guided by game theory apart from a few notable exceptions it is difficult to find really successful applications of game theory why to a large extent simply because the boundary conditions of game theoretical models are false and baseless from a real world perspective and perhaps even more importantly since they are not even close to being good approximations of real life game theory lacks predictive power this should come as no surprise as long as game theory sticks to its rational choice foundations there is not much to be hoped for game theorists can of course marginally modify their toolbox and fiddle with the auxiliary assumptions to get whatever outcome they want but as long as the rational choice core assumptions are left intact it seems a pointless effort to hamper an already excessive deductive axiomatic formalism if you do believe in the real world relevance of game theoretical science fiction assumptions such as expected utility common knowledge backward induction correct and consistent beliefs etc etc then adding things like framing cognitive bias and different kinds of heuristics do not solve any problem if we want to construct a theory that can provide us with explanations of individual cognition decisions and social interaction we have to look for something else applications of game theory have on the whole resulted in massive predictive failures people simply do not act according to the theory they do not know or possess the assumed probabilities utilities beliefs or information to calculate the different subgame trembling hand perfect nash equilibria they may be reasonable and make use of their given cognitive faculties as well as they can but they are obviously not those perfect and costless hyper rational expected utility maximizing calculators game theory posits and fortunately so being reasonable makes them avoid all those made up rationality traps that game theory would have put them in if they had tried to act as consistent players in a game theoretical sense share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky invictus 25 jan 2025 at 11 02 posted in varia comments off on invictus a great poem it helped one of the greatest men that has walked this earth keep hope alive during twenty seven years in prison share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky bank of england goes mmt 23 jan 2025 at 18 41 posted in economics 3 comments share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky deconstructing uncertainty 23 jan 2025 at 18 28 posted in statistics econometrics comments off on deconstructing uncertainty share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky om detta må vi berätta 20 jan 2025 at 21 53 posted in economics politics society 2 comments vi talar ofta i dag om tilltagande kriminalitet sämre hälsa och ökade psykiska problem men nästan aldrig om vad dessa symptom i hög grad är orsakade av arbetslösheten 8 5 arbetslöshet är den högsta på ett decennium och sysselsättningsgraden har successivt sjunkit sedan 80 talet detta har lett till en ökning av främst otrygga jobb och också på flera sätt försämrat för de som är sysselsatta som väl är finns det trots den bistra bilden i stort ändå några som vägrar titta åt andra hållet när den svenska modellen sakta men säkert håller på att demonteras om arbetslösheten och dess verkliga kostnader talas det initierat och intressant med stefan carlén ekonomihistoriker och chefsekonomen på handelsanställdas förbund i senaste avsnittet av starta pressarna share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky how evidence is treated in mainstream macroeconomics 19 jan 2025 at 11 25 posted in economics comments off on how evidence is treated in mainstream macroeconomics new keynesian macroeconomist simon wren lewis has a post on his blog discussing how evidence is treated in modern macroeconomics emphasis added it is hard to get academic macroeconomists trained since the 1980s to address this question because they have been taught that these models and techniques are fatally flawed because of the lucas critique and identification problems but dsge models as a guide for policy are also fatally flawed because they are too simple the unique property that dsge models have is internal consistency take a dsge model and alter a few equations so that they fit the data much better and you have what could be called a structural econometric model it is internally inconsistent but because it fits the data better it may be a better guide for policy being able to model a credible world a world that somehow could be considered real or similar to the real world is not the same as investigating the real world even though all theories are false since they simplify they may still possibly serve our pursuit of truth but then they cannot be unrealistic or false in any way the falsehood or unrealisticness has to be qualified in terms of resemblance relevance etc at the very least the minimalist demand on models in terms of credibility has to give way to a stronger epistemic demand of appropriate similarity and plausibility one could of course also ask for a sensitivity or robustness analysis but the credible world even after having tested it for sensitivity and robustness can still be a far way from reality and unfortunately often in ways we know are important the robustness of claims in a model does not per se give a warrant for exporting the claims to real world target systems questions of external validity are important more specifically also when it comes to microfounded dsge macromodels it can never be enough that these models somehow are regarded as internally consistent one always also has to pose questions of consistency with the data internal consistency without external validity is worth nothing yours truly and people like tony lawson have for many years been urging economists to pay attention to the ontological foundations of their assumptions and models sad to say economists have not paid much attention and so modern economics has become increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world within mainstream economics internal validity is still everything and external validity is nothing why anyone should be interested in that kind of theories and models is beyond imagination as long as mainstream economists do not come up with export licenses for their theories and models to the real world in which we live they really should not be surprised if people say this is not science since fully fledged experiments on a societal scale as a rule are prohibitively expensive ethically indefensible or unmanageable economic theorists have to substitute experimenting with something else to understand and explain relations between different entities in the real economy the predominant strategy is to build models and make things happen in these analogue economy models rather than engineering things happening in real economies formalistic deductive glasperlenspiel can be very impressive and seductive but in science it ought to be considered of little or no value to simply make claims about the model and lose sight of reality neoclassical economics has since long given up on the real world and content itself with proving things about thought up worlds empirical evidence only plays a minor role in economic theory where models largely function as a substitute for empirical evidence hopefully humbled by the manifest failure of its theoretical pretences the one sided almost religious insistence on axiomatic deductivist modelling as the only scientific activity worthy of pursuing in economics will give way to methodological pluralism based on ontological considerations rather than formalistic tractability to have valid evidence is not enough what economics needs is sound evidence why simply because the premises of a valid argument do not have to be true but a sound argument on the other hand is not only valid but builds on true premises aiming only for validity without soundness is setting the aspiration level of economics too low for developing a realist and relevant science share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky autonomy in econometrics 17 jan 2025 at 16 11 posted in statistics econometrics comments off on autonomy in econometrics the point of the discussion of course has to do with where koopmans thinks we should look for autonomous behaviour relations he appeals to experience but in a somewhat oblique manner he refers to the harvard barometer to show that relationships between economic variables not traced to underlying behaviour equations are unreliable as instruments for prediction his argument would have been more effectively put had he been able to give instances of relationships that have been traced to underlying behaviour equations and that have been reliable instruments for prediction he did not do this and i know of no conclusive case that he could draw upon there are of course cases of economic models that he could have mentioned as having been unreliable predictors but these latter instances demonstrate no more than the failure of harvard barometer all were presumably built upon relations that were more or less unstable in time the meaning conveyed we may suppose by the term fundamental autonomous relation is a relation stable in time and not drawn as an inference from combinations of other relations the discovery ofsuch relations suitable for the prediction procedure that koopmans has in mind has yet to be publicly presented and the phrase underlying behaviour equation is left utterly devoid of content rutledge vining i guess robert lucas didn t read vining share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky social sciences a plaidoyer 14 jan 2025 at 19 10 posted in theory of science methodology 2 comments one of the most important tasks of social sciences is to explain the events processes and structures that take place and act in society however the researcher cannot stop at this as a consequence of the relations and connections that the researcher finds a will and demand arise for critical reflection on the findings to show that unemployment depends on...