Can lowering school starting age promote equality of opportunities and reduce the achievement gaps between pupils? We provide evidence on the heterogeneous (positional) effects on early school performance of two mandatory schooling reforms in Norway specifically aimed at reducing achievement...

Based on administrative data, we analyze empirically the effects of stricter conditionality for social assistance receipt on welfare dependency and high school completion rates among Norwegian youths. Our evaluation strategy exploits a geographically differentiated implementation of...

We exploit supply-driven heterogeneity in the expansion of cable television across Norwegian municipalities to identify developmental effects of commercial television exposure during childhood. We find that higher exposure to commercial television reduces cognitive ability and high school...

In many countries, general practitioners (GPs) are assigned the task of controlling the validity of their own patients' insurance claims. At the same time, they operate in a market where patients are customers free to choose their GP. Are these roles compatible? Can we trust that the gatekeeping...

In virtually all industrialized countries, women are underrepresented in entrepreneurship, and the gender gap exhibits a remarkable persistence. We examine one particular source of persistence, namely the prevalence of gendered networks and associated peer effects. We study how early career...

We provide empirical evidence that the removal of work disincentives embedded in retirement earnings tests can increase old-age labor supply considerably, but it does so at the cost of more income inequality. Causal effects are identified based on a reform of the Norwegian early retirement...

Fueled by increasing inequality and rising fiscal deficits, the interest in wealth taxation has increased over the last years, both in the public debate and in academia. Yet, knowledge about the behavioral effects of a wealth tax is limited. We utilize rich Norwegian register data and a series...

We use administrative data from Norway to examine recent trends in the association between parents' prime age earnings rank and offspring's educational performance rank by age 15/16. We show that the intergenerational correlation between these two ranks has increased over the past decades, and...

We evaluate a comprehensive reform of Norwegian early retirement institutions in 2011 through the lens of a parsimonious random utility choice model. The reform radically changed work incentives and/or pension access-age for some (but not all) workers. We find that improved work incentives...

We examine employment effects of the COVID-19 crisis in Norway during the initial lockdown, through the subsequent recovery, and after the dust had settled. While we identify large and socially skewed effects of the crisis through its early phases, we find no long-term effects on employees...