We aim to explain petro populism - the excessive use of oil revenues to buy political support. To reap the full gains of natural resource income politicians need to remain in office over time. Hence, even a purely rent-seeking incumbent who only cares about his own welfare, will want to provide...

We develop a model of credit rating agencies (CRAs) based on reputation concerns. Ratings affect investors' choice and, thereby, also issuers' access to funding and default risk. We show that - in equilibrium - the informational content of credit ratings is inferior to that of CRAs' private...

If central banks value the ex-post accuracy of their forecasts, previously announced interest rate paths might affect the current policy rate. We explore whether this "forecast adherence" has influenced the monetary policies of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Norges Bank, the two central...

This paper explores if economic uncertainty alters the macroeconomic influence of monetary policy. We consider several measures of U.S. economic uncertainty, and estimate their interaction effects with monetary policy shocks as identified through structural vector autoregressions. We find that...

We study the interaction between monetary policy and household debt dynamics. To this end, we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where household debt is amortized gradually, and only new loans are constrained by the current value of collateral. Long-term debt implies that...

We use a simple quantitative asset pricing model to "reverse-engineer" the sequences of stochastic shocks to housing demand and lending standards that are needed to exactly replicate the boom-bust patterns in U.S. household real estate value and mortgage debt over the period 1995 to 2012....

Based on the established literature, we develop a structural model for the Norwegian economy that incorporates feed-backs from asset prices and credit to the real economy. We then use this framework for policy analysis, focusing on the role of asset prices and credit under optimal simple...

Finanskrisen har skapt en forholdsvis bred konsensus om at eksisterende regulering av finansmarkedene har rettet for mye oppmerksomhet mot de individuelle finansinstitusjoners risiko, og for lite oppmerksomhet mot risikoen det finansielle systemet som helhet. Nye styringsverktøy rettet mot...

Economic theory predicts that higher uncertainty motivates households to consume less. In this paper we empirically assess how household consumption in Norway responds to variation in economic uncertainty. We consider alternative measures of uncertainty, volatility indexes from financial markets...

Vi diskuterer tiltakene for å dempe eurokrisen i lys av en enkel teori om forventningsdrevne gjeldskriser. [...] I dette notatet gir vi en enkel teoretisk fremstilling av forventningsdrevne gjeldskriser og hvordan ulike mottiltak vil kunne fungere. I lys av denne teorien diskuterer vi deretter...