We investigate the small-sample size and power properties of bootstrapped likelihood ratio systems cointegration tests via Monte Carlo simulations when the true lag order of the data generating process is unknown. A recursive bootstrap scheme is employed. We estimate the order by minimizing...

Keynote lecture prepared for the Norges Bank research workshop “Monetary Policy Committees,” Oslo, September 6-7, 2007.

Dornbusch's exchange rate overshooting hypothesis is a central building block in international macroeconomics. Yet, empirical studies of monetary policy have typically found exchange rate effects that are inconsistent with overshooting. This puzzling result has been viewed by some researchers as...

In this paper we study the impact of an expansion in public spending in a credit constrained economy with sticky wages. The flexible wage version of the model implies strong expansionary effects on output and consumption but also a counterfactual increase in real wages. The introduction of...

This paper analyzes a framework where policymakers decide how to spend public resources on physical capital and labor in order to produce two public goods. Candidate policymakers disagree about which goods to produce, and may alternate in office due to elections. When capital and labor are...

We identify exogenous variation in incumbent policymakers' re-election probabilities and explore empirically how this variation affects the incumbents' investment in physical capital. Our results indicate that a higher re-election probability leads to higher investments, particularly in the...

Stakeholder oriented governance systems are often thought to hamper efficiency. We show that social capital improves the viability of stakeholder-oriented firms in competitive markets. Studying exits from the population of Norwegian savings banks after deregulations, we find that banks located...

I evaluate a bank's incentives to implement a risk sensitive regulatory capital rule and to invest in improved risk measurement. The decision making is analyzed within a real options framework where optimal policies are derived in terms of threshold levels of risk. I also evaluate the situation...

In this paper we study the transmission mechanisms of productivity shocks in a model with rule-of-thumb consumers. In the literature, this financial friction has been studied only with reference to fiscal shocks. We show that the presence of rule-of-thumb consumers is also very helpful in...

This paper finds that asset prices on Oslo Stock Exchange is the single most important block of data to improve estimates of current quarter GDP in Norway. Other important blocks of data are labor market data and industrial production indicators. We use an approximate dynamic factor model that...