In this paper the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) is constructed with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares (PLS). Using the SIGI, we test the effects of social institutions related to gender inequality on several development outcomes, such as female education,...

The MDGs are interlinked: acceleration in one goal is likely to speed up progress in others. Nevertheless, these synergies are not always visible, and may differ across countries. Using bivariate cluster analysis, this paper investigates whether distinct groups of developing countries can be...

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is not the first attempt to examine poverty along multiple definitions. Vis-a-vis the existing work and other presently available measures, this method has greater advantage in terms of international comparability and reporting. However, the methodology...

The Human Development Index (HDI) published in the Human Development Report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Program is calculated as a simple average of the Life Expectancy Index (LEI), the Education Index (EI) and the Gross Domestic Product Index (GDPI). This paper provides statistical...

The standard cost-of-living index hinges on the assumption that there is free trade. Applying it to situations where trade barriers are present yields biased results with respect to a true cost-of-living index. Import price indices are particularly vulnerable to this bias since many of the goods...

According to the present guidelines for fiscal policy, the use of oil revenues in the Norwegian economy should over time equal the expected real return on the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG). An important question is therefore how to measure the real return, taking into account that the...

The Norwegian productivity puzzle is rooted in three seemingly contradictory "facts": First, Norway is one of the most productive OECD countries. Second, Norway has experienced high growth in productivity. Third, Norway has a relatively low level of R&D intensity. In this article, I show that...

Many OECD countries have experienced a slowdown in measured labour productivity from 2005 and onwards. Norway is no exception in this respect. Most countries use a simple aggregate of hours worked when measuring labour productivity. One way to improve measurement of labour services is to control...

Foster et al. (2001) outline a framework that is commonly used to identify the contribution from firm turnover to aggregate productivity growth. The framework is not derived from economic theory and it implies that productivity levels determine the contribution from reallocation and firm...

Decompositions of international price indices are usually inexact in the sense that the underlying aggregator formula is not exactly reproduced. In this paper, we compare analytically the exact and inexact decompositions of international price indices, paying particular attention to the bias in...