There has been a remarkable increase in wage inequality in the United States, UK, and many other countries over the past three decades. A significant part of this appears to be within observable groups (such as experience-gender-skill cells). A generally untested implication of many theories...

In this paper we analyze the pattern of employment adjustment using a rich panel of Norwegian plants. The data suggest that the frequency of episodes of zero net employment changes is inversely related to plant size. We develop and estimate a simple “q” model of labor demand, allowing for...

Reorganization of public utilities is on the current political agenda in many European countries. However, in many cases the most fundamental question in terms of public policy towards these industries is not tested; does the underlying cost structure indicate a natural monopoly or not? Evans and...

Using a variance decomposition framework which provides bounds on the effect of families and neighbourhoods, we find important effects of family characteristics and residential location on educational attainment and adult earnings in Norway. Neighbourhoods are less important than families, as...

School quality is hard to define and measure. It is influenced by not only school expenditures, but also characteristics that are hard to measure like norms and peer effects among teachers and pupils. Furthermore, family background and community characteristics are important in explaining...

Starting in the 1960s, considerable opposition to the Canadian and Norwegian harp seal hunt off Newfoundland developed. It was alleged that the seal hunt was unethical and that the seal population had been seriously depleted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the production function for...

The relative performance between seasons in a fishery is tested empirically. In particular, the importance of a stochastic environment-what may be denoted as fishing luck in a fishery-is established by applying Dickey-Fuller unit-root tests for the efficiency scores of vessels between seasons....

In this paper, we explore the impact of a mandatory education reform as well as pre-reform availability of schools above the mandatory level, on educational attainment and returns to education in Norway. We contribute to the existing literature by focusing on the heterogeneity of the impact of...

We use a population-based employer-employee dataset to analyze changes in job stability in Norway. We first present descriptive analyses of tenure and separation rates, followed by regression-adjusted measures controlling for changes in demographics and the business cycle. We see only weak...

This paper uses Norwegian data to estimate the effect of family size on IQ scores of men. Instrumental variables (IV) estimates using sex composition as an instrument show no significant negative effect of family size; however, IV estimates using twins imply that family size has a negative effect...