We study Switzerland's 1990s growth weakness through the lens of the business cycle accounting framework by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2007). Our main result is that weak productivity growth cannot account for the experienced stagnation. Rather, the stagnation is explained by factors that made...

This paper uses neoclassical theory as a foundation for modelling labour demand in Norwegian manufacturing. Applying the Johansen (1988,1991) methodology, we obtain a single cointegrating vector between employment, production, relative factor prices, total factor productivity and the stock of...

Interest in the emergence of a global middle class has resulted in a number of attempts to identify and enumerate who belongs to it . Current research provides wildly different estimates about the size and evolution of the global middle class because of a lack of consensus on appropriate...

Despite macroeconomic evidence pointing to a negative aggregate consumption response due to political uncertainty, few papers have used microeconomic panel data to analyze how households adjust their consumption after an uncertainty shock. We study household savings and expenditure adjustment...

Data on consumption expenditure of the household is essential in a wide array of economic research. This includes both topics in micro as well as macroeconomics. However, obtaining a consistent and precise measure of household consumption has proven notoriously difficult. This paper documents a...

Using Norwegian administrative data, we study how sizable lottery prizes affect household expenditure and savings. Expenditure responses (MPCs) spike in the year of winning, with a mean estimate of 0.35, and thereafter fall markedly. Controlling for all items on the household balance sheet and...

A precautionary saving model is extended to include old-age pensions and provides the framework for an empirical analysis of the relation between old-age pensions and private consumption. Norwegian macro-data for socioeconomic groups of households are used to estimate consumption functions for...

This paper deals with optimal consumption over time. The starting point is a dynamic utility function which is exponential where the exponent is quadratic in the observable consumption outlays. The approach is shown to be a generalization of Hall's formulation of the consumption relation. While...

The present paper uses the model by Campbell and Mankiw (1991) to examine the Norwegian consumer behavior and the role of the financial deregulation during the 1980s. For quarterly data on non-durables and services, we estimate the fraction of current income consumers to be in the range of 37%...

We consider testing for long-run homogeneity within a dynamic consumer demand system allowing for non-stationarities. The static long-run solution is assumed to follow the Linear Almost Ideal Demand System and we test for long-run homogeneity within this system utilizing a triangular...