I use a consumption-based test to examine the importance of income constraints and the degree of capital mobility across the Nordic countries over the period 1968-96. In particular, I explore the effects of financial deregulation of the 1980s. The estimating equation is derived along the lines...

The paper argues, firstly, that it is in the interest of the Nordic countries to focus increasingly at the EU new Eastern Neighbourhood and make their policies in the region more active. The region is gaining importance for Europe for various reasons, one of which is that the success or failure...

It is widely accepted that in liberalized electricity markets log-returns display fat-tailed densities. Besides qualitative assessments, so far precise characterizations of the shape of the distribution have been seldom provided. In this work, we characterize the conditional and unconditional...

The first part of this paper establishes some new pieces of evidence on the dynamics of prices and volumes in wholesale electricity day-ahead markets (NordPool, APX, Powernext). The growth of prices is more strongly autocorrelated than the growth of volumes; it is more more heavy-tailed; and its...

In uniform price, sealed-bid day-ahead electricity auctions, the market price is set at the intersection between aggregate demand and supply functions built by a market operator. Each day, just one agent - the marginal generator - owns the market-clearing plant. Day-ahead auctions are moreover...

There are plans of a substantial increase in the construction of renewable power in Scandinavia in the coming 10 years. The Nordic countries operate a common wholesale market, Nord Pool. Intermittent power (wind power, solar and small-scale hydro power) is stochastic and therefore needs other...

This paper summarizes in a non-technical way what we know from empirical studies based on firm-level data about the mutual links between international activities of firms and productivity. It is written with a view to inform policy makers in an evidence-based way. A special focus is on the...

Although there is a vast theoretical literature on the existence of a tradeoff between equity and efficiency, empirical investigations often fail to find evidence for this proposition. Furthermore there are hints that some social models in Europe can cope better with this trade-off and are...