• A Fundamental Externality in the Labour Market? Ragnar Frisch on the socially optimal amount of work. 

      Sandmo, Agnar (DP SAM;2/2018, Working paper, 2018-01)
      In the late 1940s, Ragnar Frisch published two articles in Norwegian that constitute a pioneering attempt to apply welfare economics to a problem of economic policy. The main contention of the articles is that there exists ...
    • Accountability and taxation: Experimental evidence 

      Sjursen, Ingrid Hoem (DP SAM;24/2018, Working paper, 2018-11)
      The Rentier State Hypothesis states that taxation promotes government accountability. The argument is that citizens demand more accountability for spending of tax revenue than for spending of windfall revenue (e.g., natural ...
    • All-pay auctions with affiliated values 

      Chi, Chang Koo; Murto, Pauli; Välimäki, Juuso (DP SAM;13/2017, Working paper, 2017-08)
      This paper analyzes all-pay auctions where the bidders have affiliated values for the object for sale and where the signals take binary values. Since signals are correlated, high signals indicate a high degree of competition ...
    • Ambiguity Attitudes in the Loss Domain: Decisions for Self versus Others. 

      Xu, Yilong; Xu, Xiaogeng; Tucker, Peter (DP SAM;11/2018, Working paper, 2018-05)
      We study whether people’s ambiguity attitudes differ when deciding for themselves or for others in the loss domain. We find no differences in ambiguity attitudes between self- and other-regarding decision-making. Our results ...
    • An analysis of the two-bidder all-pay auction with common values 

      Chi, Chang Koo (DP SAM;17/2018, Working paper, 2018-08)
      This paper studies a symmetric two-bidder all-pay auction where the bidders compete for a prize whose unknown common value is either high or low. The bidders’ private signals (or types) are discrete and affiliated through ...
    • Attitudes towards large income risk in welfare states: an international comparison. 

      Schroyen, Fred; Aarbu, Karl Ove (DP SAM;20/2017, Working paper, 2017-12)
      Using survey data and the instrument developed by Barsky et al. (1997), we estimate the distribution of attitudes towards income risk in a country where many employment and health-related risks are generously covered by a ...
    • Competition and physician behaviour: Does the competitive environment affect the propensity to issue sickness certificates? 

      Brekke, Kurt R.; Holmås, Tor Helge; Monstad, Karin; Straume, Odd Rune (DP SAM;3, Working paper, 2017)
      Competition among physicians is widespread, but compelling empirical evidence on the impact on service provision is limited, mainly due to lack of exogenous variation in the degree of competition. In this paper we exploit ...
    • Empowering the disabled through savings groups: Experimental evidence from Uganda. 

      Bjorvatn, Kjetil; Tungodden, Bertil (DP SAM;5/2018, Working paper, 2018-03)
      We report from the first randomized controlled trial of a development program targeting people with disabilities: a village savings‐ and loans program in rural Uganda. We find that it has had a strong, positive impact ...
    • Euler Equations, Subjective Expectations and Income Shocks 

      Attanasio, Orazio; Kovacs, Agnes; Molnar, Krisztina (DP SAM;21/2018, Working paper, 2018)
      In this paper, we make three substantive contributions: first, we use elicited subjective income expectations to identify the levels of permanent and transitory income shocks in a life-cycle framework; second, we use these ...
    • Exercise Improves Academic Performance. 

      Cappelen, Alexander W.; Charness, Gary; Ekström, Mathias; Gneezy, Uri; Tungodden, Bertil (DP SAM;8/2017, Working paper, 2017-08)
      We report the results of a randomized controlled trial testing whether incentivizing physical exercise improves the academic performance of college students. As expected, the intervention increases physical activity. The ...
    • Fairness in Winner-Take-All Markets 

      Bartling, Björn; Cappelen, Alexander W.; Ekström, Mathias; Sørensen, Erik Ø.; Tungodden, Bertil (DP SAM;8/2018, Working paper, 2018-04)
      The paper reports the first experimental study on people’s fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income ...
    • Going Fast or Going Green? Evidence from Environmental Speed Limits in Norway 

      Folgerø, Ingrid Kristine; Harding, Torfinn; Westby, Benjamin S. (DP SAM;12/2017, Working paper, 2017-08)
      This paper studies the impact of speed limits on local air pollution, using a series of datespecific speed limit reductions in Oslo over the 2004-2015 period. We find that lowering the speed limit from 80 to 60 km/h reduces ...
    • Household bargaining and spending on children: Experimental evidence from Tanzania. 

      Ringdal, Charlotte; Sjursen, Ingrid Hoem (DP SAM;19/2017, Working paper, 2017-10)
      It is frequently assumed that money in the hands of women leads to better out-comes for their children than money in the hands of men. However, empirical and theoretical evidence are mixed. We conduct a novel between-subject ...
    • Incarceration Spillovers in Criminal and Family Networks 

      Bhuller, Manudeep; Dahl, Gordon B.; Løken, Katrine V.; Mogstad, Magne (DP SAM;15/2018, Working paper, 2018-08)
      Using quasi-random assignment of criminal cases to judges, we estimate large incarceration spillovers in criminal and brother networks. When a defendant is sent to prison, there are 51 and 32 percentage point reductions ...
    • Incarceration, Recidivism and Employment. 

      Bhuller, Manudeep; Dahl, Gordon B.; Løken, Katrine V.; Mogstad, Magne (DP SAM;14/2018, Working paper, 2018-06)
      Understanding whether, and in what situations, time spent in prison is criminogenic or preventive has proven challenging due to data availability and correlated unobservables. This paper overcomes these challenges in the ...
    • Measuring Market Power in Gasoline Retailing: A Market- or Station Phenomenon? 

      Nguyen-Ones, Mai; Steen, Frode (DP SAM;6/2018, Working paper, 2018-04)
      Applying detailed consecutive daily micro data at the gasoline station level from Sweden we estimate a structural model to uncover the degree of competition in the gasoline retail market. We find that retailers do exercise ...
    • Navigating through torpedo attacks and enemy raiders: Merchant shipping and freight rates during World War I 

      Klovland, Jan Tore (SAM;07/2017, Working paper, 2017)
      During World War I ocean freight rates rose to extraordinary levels. Using a new monthly dataset it is shown that freight rates can be well explained by economic activity, commodity prices, war risk and world tonnage in ...
    • On the Effect of Parallel Trade on Manufacturers’ and Retailers’ Profits in the Pharmaceutical Sector. 

      Dubois, Pierre; Sæthre, Morten (DP SAM;3/2018, Working paper, 2018-02)
      Differences in regulated pharmaceutical prices within the European Economic Area create arbitrage opportunities that pharmacy retailers can use through parallel imports. For prescription drugs under patent, such provision ...
    • On the perils of stabilizing prices when agents are learning 

      Mele, Antonio; Molnar, Krisztina; Santoro, Sergio (DP SAM;22/2018, Working paper, 2018)
      The main advantage of price level stabilization compared with in ation stabilization rests on the central bank's ability to shape expectations. We show that stabilizing prices is no longer optimal when the central bank ...
    • Public R&D Support and Firms’ Performance A Panel Data Study. 

      Nilsen, Øivind Anti; Raknerud, Arvid; Iancu, Diana-Cristina (DP SAM;13/2018, Working paper, 2018-06)
      We analyse all the major sources of direct and indirect R&D subsidies in Norway in the period 2002-2013 and compare their effects on individual firms’ performance. Firms that received support are matched with a control ...