The paper analyses the fiscal effects of productivity shifts in the private sector. Within a stylized model with inelastic labour supply, it shows that productivity shifts in sectors producing non-traded goods (N-sector) are irrelevant for the tax rates necessary to meet the government budget...

The Norwegian pension reform of 2006 intends to (1) improve long run fiscal sustainability by reducing the growth in public old-age expenditures, (2) strengthen labour supply incentives, and (3) maintain the main redistributive features of the present system. We assess to what extent the reform...

Large petroleum revenues make Norway an enviable fiscal loner. The fiscal policy rule adopted from 2001 transforms petroleum wealth into foreign assets, and only the real return on the financial fund should be spent annually. Despite this ambitious saving of the petroleum wealth, we find it...

Ageing combined with generous welfare state schemes makes the present fiscal policy in Norway unsustainable, despite large government petroleum revenues. We estimate to what extent two suggested reforms of the public pension system improve fiscal sustainability and stimulate employment, two main...

Assessments of fiscal sustainability (FS) problems should be based on present values of government revenues and expenditures over an infinite horizon. The paper shows that realistic assumptions imply that the growth rate of government expenditure components may exceed both the steady state...