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INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

Research and Education in Quantitative Macroeconomics with Focus on Inequality: Cooperation Between UiO, UPenn and UToronto

Alternative title: Forskning og undervisning i kvantitativ makroøkonomi med fokus på ulikhet: Samarbeid mellom UiO, UPenn og UToronto

Awarded: NOK 1.5 mill.

In line with our department strategy of belonging to the European elite in macroeconomics, and the University of Oslo's strategy to strengthen its international position as a leading research-intensive university through a close interaction between research and education, we are now aiming to formalize, strengthen and build out our collaboration with two world-leading research groups, the University of Pennsylvania, USA and the University of Toronto, Canada. They both have particular strengths in quantitative macroeconomics. Our goal is a long-term collaboration which includes student mobility, exchange of research and teaching staff, joint articles and publications between researchers and/or students in the partnerships, and a jointly organized conference. Every August, during the three-year project duration, we have organized an intensive Ph.D. course in quantitative / computational macroeconomics taught by leading experts from the University of Toronto and the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Diego Restuccia (University of Toronto, 2017), Professor Dirk Krueger (University of Pennsylvania, 2018), Professor Jose-Victor Rios-Rull (University of Pennsylvania, 2019). The courses was attended by Ph.D. students and postdocs from the University of Oslo as well as Ph.D. students from the other Nordic countries and researchers from Norges Bank and BI. In November 2019 we organized a joint conference in macroeconomics, for faculty and Ph.D. students from the three universities in Philadelphia. Two of our postdocs, Yikai Wang and Lan Lan presented in the conference. Professor Kjetil Storesletten presented a joint paper with Hans Holter (University of Oslo) and Serdar Ozkan (University of Toronto), which is one of the outcomes of the cooperation and which is almost ready to be submitted for publication. During all years of the project duration, there have been several research visits between the three Universities. Researchers from Oslo have gone to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Toronto and researchers from Toronto and Penn have come to Oslo. 2 joint articles between researchers at the three institutions have been accepted for publication and we have started several projects that are either currently being considered for publication or are still in progress. One of our Ph.D. students, Herman Kruuse, visited the economics department at the University of Pennsylvania for half a year from September 2018 until January 2019.

The project has given a lift to Ph.D. education in quantitative macroeconomics at University of Oslo. The organized under the project PhD courses have been attended by PhD students and postdocs from the Nordic countries and researches from the central bank of Norway and BI. It helped the young researchers to meet the peers and start networking. The project contributed to the education at Master level: engagement of the leading experts in teaching and developing the course materials improved the quality of program. The research visits of PhD, post-docs and professors resulted in intensive collaboration and start of new research.Two of initiative have got funding from RCN. This was the first INTPART project, and It showed how the administration and research staff should coordinate and work together on the improvement of education process and research. But still the project has been a success.

The Principal Investigators in this INTPART project have one FRIHUMSAM Researcher Project and one ERC Advanced Grant that qualify for the INTPART funding program. The two qualifying projects are part of the Center of Excellence, ESOP, also a qualifying project. The two qualifying projects, headed by the principal investigators are both focusing on quantitative macroeconomics and inequality. They are: 1) Inequality in Macroeconomics: Empirical Evidence, headed by Professor Marcus Hagedorn: http://www.sv.uio.no/esop/english/research/projects/hetmacro/. 2) The Macroeconomics of Inequality, Development and the Welfare State, headed by Professor Kjetil Storesletten: http://www.sv.uio.no/esop/english/research/projects/macroinequality/. In line with our department strategy of belonging to the European elite in macroeconomics, and the University of Oslo's strategy to strengthen its international position as a leading research-intensive university through a close interaction between research and education, we are now aiming to formalize, strengthen and build out our collaboration with two world leading research groups, the University of Pennsylvania, USA and the University of Toronto, Canada. They both have particular strengths in quantitative macroeconomics. Our goal is a long term collaboration which includes student mobility, exchange of research and teaching staff, joint articles and publications between researchers and/or students in the partnerships, and a jointly organized conference. Several high quality publications will come out of the cooperation between researchers from the 3 institutions. We also expect some high quality PhD dissertations in the area, the placement of PhD students in good academic jobs and the formation of a long-lasting researchnetwork that will benefit all three institutions in years to come.

Funding scheme:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research