FRIPROSJEKT-FRIPROSJEKT

Norway is a small, open, and resource-based economy where global changes in oil prices, exchange rate volatility, and other international shocks affect the economy and societal well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic and high energy prices are examples of such shocks that have significantly impacted the Norwegian economy. Sharp fluctuations in oil prices, high unemployment, rising inflation, and changes in the population's willingness to accept inequality create challenges for the welfare state and highlight the need for a group of economists with a broad set of skills to develop new knowledge. The project Global Challenges, Sustainability, and the Welfare State is a unique platform for labor, behavioral, and macroeconomists studying economic inequality, the financing of the welfare state, the drivers of macroeconomic cycles, and the challenges of a resource-based economy. This collaboration among researchers has increased the visibility of all research groups within the global research community and among policymakers. Project participants have led various commissions and committees and expanded their networks through conferences, research exchanges, and education. Additionally, the project has contributed to educating a new generation of labor, behavioral, and macroeconomists through four PhD courses at NHH.

The project made several contributions to the scientific community and the society at large: We created research cooperation with a brought skillset to provide new knowledge for on-time policymaking, and project members participated and led government expert committees. We expanded our research group's international network to push the group's research output to the international frontier. During the project period, several of our project participants published in the very best journals in economics and won prizes for outstanding research output. We established multinational partnerships for Nordic and European calls. During the project period, several interdisciplinary European grant proposals and several Nordforsk proposals were submitted. We supported young researchers in Norway in developing their own research agenda and becoming research leaders. Several PhD students benefitting from the project got very good academic jobs after finishing their PhD at NHH. These placements include Harvard University, Aalto University, University of Lausanne, SSB, and FHI. Several young researchers managed to get permanent positions at NHH or other universities during the project periods. We attracted new research talents to Norway. This includes several researchers hired in Tenure-Track positions, new PhD students, and postdocs from all over the globe. We promoted gender balance in academic leadership positions. One of the female project members was promoted to professor level, and several other female professors received large project grants.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on the Norwegian economy. A sharp drop in oil prices, volatility in the currency markets, high unemployment rates, and changes in people’s willingness to accept inequalities poses challenges to the welfare state and demonstrates the need for a group of economists with a brought skillset to create new knowledge for on-time policymaking. The project Global Challenges, Sustainability, and the Welfare State is a unique platform for labor, behavioral, and macroeconomists studying economic inequality, the financing of the welfare state, economic restructuring, drivers of macroeconomic cycles and economic policy, and the challenges of a resource-rich economy. In particular, we form a new collaboration between the two research groups at NHH: the Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality, and Rationality (FAIR) and the Macroeconomics, Risk and Sustainability group. FAIR aims to conduct groundbreaking experimental research on how to address inequality in society and is an internationally leading research group in labor, behavioral and experimental economics with extensive experience in working with registry data and in running all types of experiments. The Macroeconomics, Risk and Sustainability group analyzes the linkages between the resource sectors and the overall economy and optimal fiscal policy strategies. The key features uniting the two groups are i) the use of the rich administrative data and rigorous statistical methods to identify causal effects and ii) the goal to provide research results that are highly policy relevant. This unique cooperation will expand its visibility in the global research community and the policy sphere though international network building, workshop organization, research exchanges, and the education of a new generation of labor, behavioral and macroeconomists able to identify and deal with the causes and consequences of economic changes in a global setting.