We examine the role of the Norwegian education system in explaining the moderate and stable earnings dispersion in Norway. Estimating earnings equations for 1980 and 1990, we find that returns to education have been remarkably stable in Norway, also when we compare returns to education across...

In spite of the large and growing literature on producer heterogeneity and firm exit behavior, little attention has been paid to the vintage capital theory of firm exits as an alternative hypothesis to learning/selection. Interpreted at the firm level the vintage capital theory predicts that...

Over the years, egalitarian philosophers have made some challenging claims about the nature of egalitarianism. They have argued that the Rawlsian leximin principle is not an egalitarian idea; that egalitarian reasoning should make us reject the Pareto principle; that the numbers should not count...

Population ageing implies that the large pay-as-you-go social security programs implemented in many OECD economies will run into severe financial problems. By means of a numerical overlapping generations model, this paper investigates the intergenerational welfare effects of a transition to...

New regulation for the EU automobile industry allows dealers to engage in multifranchise operation, a practice that formerly could be prohibited by the producers in this market. We argue that a likely consequence of thsi shift in regulatory regime is increased dealer concentration. This will...

The paper analyses optimal taxation of corporate profits when governments can choose both the rate and the base of the corporation tax, but are constrained to collect a given amount of corporate tax revenue. In a standard two-period model of investment and international mobility of portfolio...