We find that the Norwegian R&D tax credit scheme introduced in 2002 mainly works as intended. The scheme is cost-effective and it is used by a large number of firms. It stimulates these firms to invest more in R&D, and, in particular, the effect is positive for small firms with little R&D...

Norwegian business spending on R&D is low by OECD standards. To stimulate business R&D, in 2002 the Norwegian government introduced a tax-based incentive, SkatteFUNN. We analyze the effects of SkatteFUNN on the likelihood of innovating and patenting. Using a rich database for Norwegian firms, we...

Rapid growth in productivity combined with increasing wage dispersion in some countries, notably Anglo-Saxon, has been the subject of numerous studies. The main hypothesis in the literature is that an increased skill premium provides a link between productivity growth and inequality. If this...

Several small open economies switched to inflation targeting during the 1990s, thereby giving up various forms of exchange rate targeting in favour of flexible exchange rates. Norway did the same early in 2001, and has thereafter experienced highly varying nominal exchange rates with consumer...

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) has become the benchmark model for understanding inflation in modern monetary economics. One reason for the popularity is the microfoundation of the model, which decomposes agents' behaviour into price adjustments and deviations of the price level from its...

Recently, several authors have questioned the evidence claimed by Galí and Gertler (1999) and Galí, Gertler and López-Salido (2001) that a hybrid version of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve approximates European and US inflation dynamics quite well. We re-examine the evidence using...

The formation of export prices is an area in which the linear quadratic adjustment cost (LQAC) model under rational expectations may be relevant in practice. This paper evaluates the empirical performance of the LQAC-model using Norwegian data and a new testing procedure suggested by Johansen...

During the second half of the 1970s there was massive government interference in wage and price formation in Norway. Incomes policies changed in the first half of the 1980s - the hey days of "dynamic tax policies" in Norway - and during the second half of the 1980s new direct interventions in...

We examine how changes to regulations and the economic conditions have influenced gross immigration to Norway from, in principle, all countries in the world during 1969– 2010. In line with existing studies of immigration we find that economic factors were important for immigration to Norway....

The degree of exchange rate pass-through to domestic goods prices has important implications for monetary policy in small open economies with floating exchange rates. Evidence indicates that pass-through is faster to import prices than to consumer prices. Price setting behaviour in the...