We aim to explain petro populism–the excessive use of oil revenues to buy political support. To reap the full gains of natural resource income politicians need to remain in office over time. Hence, even a purely rent-seeking incumbent who only cares about his own welfare, will want to provide...

This paper analyzes the effects of fiscal policy in an open economy. We extend the savers-spenders theory of Mankiw (2000) to a small open economy with endogenous labor supply. We first show how the Dornbusch (1983) consumption-based real interest rate for open economies is modified when labor...

This paper studies the relationship between income and risky choice in a field ex- periment where stakes are of first-orderimportance to the subjects' living standards. We combine observations of stopping decisions in a Norwegian game show with reliable data on each subject's income....

We ask how the potential benefits from cross-border asset trade are affected by the presence of non-traded income risk in incomplete markets. We show that the mean consumption growth may be lower with full integration than in financial autarky. This can occur because: the hedging demand for...

Decision rules matter for monetary policy in a currency union if the interest rate affects member states differently. We examine the consequences for inflation, output and interest rate fluctuations and the welfare loss of four alternative types of decision procedures. We show that the...

Public social security systems may provide diversification of risks to individuals’ life-time income. Capturing that a pay-as-you-go program (paygo) may be considered as a “quasiasset”, we study the optimal size of the social security program as well as the optimal split between a funded...

This paper investigates the allocation decision of an investor with two projects. Separate managers control the mean return from each project, and the investor may or may not observe the managers’ actions. We show that the investor’s risk-return trade-off may be radically different from a...

In this paper we analyze how an individual should optimally invest in her own human capital when she also has financial wealth. We treat the individual’s option to take more education as expansion options and apply real option analysis. We characterize the individual’s optimal consumption...

This paper investigates the allocation decision of an investor who owns two projects, a domestic and a foreign one. A manager governs the expected return from each project, and the investor has less information on the actions of the foreign manager. The investor’s portfolio will be tilted...

We suggest a probabilistic voting model where voters’ preferences for alternative public goods display habit formation. Current policies determine habit levels and in turn the future preferences of the voters. This allows the incumbent to act strategically in order to influence the probability...