Research Grants

Jump to content

Research Grants

Researchers at the Department of Economics have been awarded funding and grants from a variety of sources.

ERC GRANTS

The European Research Council (ERC) funds outstanding researchers and ideas. The award of a grant from ERC is the among most prestigious funding a researcher can receive. Researchers at the Department of Economics have in total received four grants from ERC.

  • Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy: DEEP

    Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy: DEEP

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy: DEEP (2023-2028)

    Grant: 15 million NOK

    Summary: Environmental policymakers always need to weigh sustainability benefits against costs. For consumers, choices and behaviours are based on the benefits provided to them by policies. In this context, the EU-funded DEEP project will consider the causes of varying adaptation to new environmental policies like renewable energy subsidies and the electrification of transportation. As such, DEEP will shed light on how environmental policies shape choices, with consequences for policy effectiveness and the evolution of disparities among households and firms. The key to achieving this is the construction of novel and exceptionally ambitious models of decisions that affect outcomes over time. The results will broaden our understanding of how inequality develops under policy choices in interaction with pre-existing disparities. 

  • From Household Allocations to Global Inequality: New Methods, Facts and Policy Implications

    From Household Allocations to Global Inequality: New Methods, Facts and Policy Implications

    Principal Investigator

    Project: From Household Allocations to Global Inequality: New Methods, Facts and Policy Implications (2022-2027)

    Grant: 12 million NOK

    Summary: Measuring inequalities within households is not straightforward nor easy because there is a lack of appropriate measurement tools and data, amongst other challenges. This impacts our understanding and therefore the design of cost-effective poverty reduction and child development policies. The ERC-funded UNEQUALWITHIN project will examine household allocation of resources and household decision making with a global outlook combined with an-in depth focus on households in Tanzania. The work of the project will lead to an integrated framework, new tools and data that will shape our understanding of the mechanisms behind inequalities among adults and child development.

  • Fairness and the moral mind

    Fairness and the moral mind

    Principal investigator

    Project: Fairness and the moral mind (2018-2024)

    Grant: 22,5 million NOK

    Summary: The project provides a comprehensive and groundbreaking approach to the analysis of the moral mind and inequality acceptance. 

  • Criminality, Victimization and Social Interactions

    Criminality, Victimization and Social Interactions

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Criminality, Victimization and Social Interactions (2018-2023)

    Grant: 10,4 million NOK

    Summary: CIVICS aims to understand the structure and causal relations of criminal's social networks. The project is a pioneering large-scale study of the broader social context of the economics of crime, focusing on causality and will unearth understanding on criminal networks, determining costs of victimization and validate benfits of prison rehabilitation programmes.

NorgesGruppen

FOOD is a joint five-year research collaboration between NHH and NorgesGruppen to generate research and new knowledge on the grocery markets.

  • FOOD

    FOOD

    Principal Investigator

    Project: FOOD (2016-2026)

    Grant: 21 million NOK

    Summary: The objective of the collaboration is to increase the knowledge about the grocery industry, particularly through generating new research on empirical issues related to market structure, competition and productivity.

Equinor

Equinor grants funding to Norwegian universities and NHH through the Academia agreement. Researchers at the Department of Economics have received one grant from Equinor.

  • Equinor

    Equinor

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Equinor: Macroeconomics and Natural resources (2018-2024)

    Grant: 10 million NOK

    Summary: The project generates new knowledge on how the Nordic model and economic institutions facilitates efficient allocation of resources across firms. The project supports talented young researchers in macroeconomics/environmental economics and teaching activities related to these fields.

NFR Grants

The Research Council of Norway (NFR) invest in research and innovation through different portfolios. Researchers at the Department of Economics have received several grants from NFR.

  • Management Practices and Gender Gaps: Mechanisms behind the Gender Gap in Career Progression

    Management Practices and Gender Gaps: Mechanisms behind the Gender Gap in Career Progression

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Management Practices and Gender Gaps: Mechanisms behind the Gender Gap in Career Progression: MAP-GAP (2023-2027)

    Summary: MAP-GAP is a project proposal at the intersection between personnel economics and behavioral economics. We will analyze how career dynamics are affected by gender differences in beliefs, preferences, and psychological traits, and their interaction with firm practices and gender attitudes among managers. 

  • Firm Power, Worker Power, and the Structure of Labor Markets

    Firm Power, Worker Power, and the Structure of Labor Markets

    Principal Investigator

    Grant: 8 million NOK

    Project: Firm Power, Worker Power, and the Structure of Labor Markets (2023-2027)

  • Freedom to Choose

    Freedom to Choose

    Principal Investigators

    Project: Freedom to Choose: FREE (2022-2025)

    Grant: 12,5 million NOK

    Summary: Considerations of individual freedom and personal responsibility figure prominently in almost all spheres of society, from policy debates about income redistribution and government regulation of market transactions to interpersonal interactions in everyday life. What constitutes a free choice? How much weight should be attached to considerations of individual freedom relative to other types of considerations? The FREE-project aims to address these questions and to create a unique platform for interdisciplinary experimental research on perceptions of free choice and how concerns for the freedom to choose affects behaviour and policy attitudes.

  • Challenges to shaping an inclusive work-life in rapidly changing labour markets: Firms, Human capital, and Family policy

    Challenges to shaping an inclusive work-life in rapidly changing labour markets: Firms, Human capital, and Family policy

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Challenges to shaping an inclusive work-life in rapidly changing labour markets: Firms, Human capital, and Family policy - EquiFirm (2021-2027)

    Grant: 12 million NOK

    Summary: EquiFirm will develop new measures of human capital development and careers within firms taking account of the organisation structure internal to firms. These are then combined with natural experiments through public policy changes, such as social and family policies. To derive quantitative results, EquiFirm will build a high-quality administrative register database of merged information on firms and workers. Combining new insights in human capital, natural experiments and high-quality data, EquiFirm aims to unfold a detailed picture of adjustments within firms.

  • When macro meets micro: Global challenges and heterogeneous responses in Norway

    When macro meets micro: Global challenges and heterogeneous responses in Norway

    Principal investigator

    Project: When macro meets micro: Global challenges and heterogeneous responses in Norway - Macro Micro (2021-2027)

    Grant: 12 million NOK

    Summary: "Macro-Micro" will contribute to a better understanding of how the transition away from a petroleum-based economy may affect the efficiency of resource allocations. The project will study the drivers, spillovers and challenges resource rich economies face and discuss Norway's challenges in connection with technological change, robotisation and digitalization.

  • Intra-household resource allocation and targeted transfers

    Intra-household resource allocation and targeted transfers

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Intra-household resource allocation and targeted transfers (2021-2025)

    Summary: This ambitious research project will aim to provide research evidence on the effect of gender targeting. The project will develop and use novel survey design and economic experiments, both in the "lab" and in the field, to study the effect of gender targeting on female empowerment and child development.

    This project leverage on the existing infrastructure of the Kizazi Kijacho project.

  • FAIR INEQUALITY AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE NATURE OF INEQUALITY ACCEPTANCE

    FAIR INEQUALITY AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: THE NATURE OF INEQUALITY ACCEPTANCE

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Fair inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance (2016-2022)

    Summary: The project will address the following fundamental research question: What explains inequality acceptance? This question will be studied from different perspectives and by the use of a number of empirical approaches, including novel incentivized experiments on nationally representative populations, lab experiments, survey experiments, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It is a truly multidisciplinary project that aims at groundbreaking research. It will combine insights from economics, psychology, political theory, and philosophy, and combine structural and non-parametric empirical analysis with theory development.

  • Work skills for life: a work readiness programme to prepare the transition from secondary school

    Work skills for life: a work readiness programme to prepare the transition from secondary school

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Work skills for life: a work readiness programme to prepare the transition from secondary school (2020-2024)

    Grant: 6 million NOK

    Summary: In collaboration with the non-governmental organization Femina Hip, this project will study the transition of students from secondary schools to the labor market in Tanzania, and test innovative ways to improve it. The project will last for four years and, in addition to FAIR, it involves researchers from Yale, IFS in London, ESRF in Tanzania and CISMAC at UiB.

  • Support for network-related activities that promote scientific development and renewal within the Center for Business Economics

    Support for network-related activities that promote scientific development and renewal within the Center for Business Economics

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Support for network-related activities that promote scientific development and renewal within the Center for Business Economics (2020-2024)

    Grant: 1,2 million NOK

    Summary: Prosjektet inkluderer nettverksaktiviteter for fagutvikling og faglig fornyelse som favner bredt innad i CBE og som øker spillovereffekten fra forskning til utdanning. Hoveddelen av prosjektet fokuserer derfor på tiltak som gagner hele miljøet, som f.eks. gjesteforskeropphold ved NHH, og tiltak som styrker satsningen på doktorgradskandidater, både internt på NHH/i CBE og nasjonalt f.eks. gjennom nasjonale kurs for doktorgradskandidater av ledende forskere innen fagområdet men tilgang til gode gjesteforskere og konferanser/workshops vil også styrke miljøet rundt og utdannelsen til de interne doktorgradskandidatene.

  • Global Challenges, Sustainability, and the Welfare State - Perspectives from Labor, Behavioral and Macroeconomics

    Global Challenges, Sustainability, and the Welfare State - Perspectives from Labor, Behavioral and Macroeconomics

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Global Challenges, Sustainability, and the Welfare State - Perspectives from Labor, Behavioral and Macroeconomics (2020-2024)

    Grant: 1,5 million NOK

    Summary: The new project Global Challenges, Sustainability, and the Welfare State is a collaboration between FAIR and the Macroeconomics, Risk and Sustainability group at NHH. Together, we aim to build a unique platform for labor, behavioral, and macroeconomists studying economic inequality, the financing of the welfare state, economic restructuring, drivers of macroeconomic cycles and economic policy, and the effects and challenges in a resource-rich economy. The key features uniting the two groups are the use of the rich administrative data in Norway and rigorous statistical methods to identify cause-and-effect relationships as well as the goal to provide research results that are highly policy-relevant. Having a group that brings the micro and the macro perspective together will provide novel partnerships to expand the research frontier and will be of great value for policymakers.

  • Education for Sustainable Job Creation

    Education for Sustainable Job Creation

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Education for Sustainable Job Creation (2020-2024)

    Summary: This project is led by Espen Villanger at CMI, and focuses on the creation sustainable jobs for economic development. The project will be situated in Ethiopia, one of the fastest growing economies in the world. While this creates employment opportunities, and in particularly so for women, we also know that labor turnover in this sector is extremely high, partly because of low wages and health hazards. The project, which is designed as a randomized control trial, will involve training employees, employers, and both, and measure the impact on broad set of outcomes against a control group.

  • SUCCESSFUL ADVANCES IN FISCAL ARCHITECTURE (SAFARI): EVIDENCE FROM A NEW TAX IN ZANZIBAR

    SUCCESSFUL ADVANCES IN FISCAL ARCHITECTURE (SAFARI): EVIDENCE FROM A NEW TAX IN ZANZIBAR

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Successful advances in fiscal architecture (SAFARI): Evidence from a new tax in Zanzibar (2021-2024)

    Summary: In this research project, we examine whether property owners are compliant with the new property tax, using administrative data. We also take a close look at whether the new tax causes fiscal externalities, exploiting the variation created by the gradual roll-out of the tax and comparing revenues from existing taxes between property owners who are subject to the new tax and property owners who are not.

    The project is led by Nadja Dwenger, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Ingrid Sjursen, Lucas Katera, and Vincent Somville. It is a collaboration between Chr. Michelsen Institute, NHH, REPOA (Tanzania), the Institute of Tax Administration (Tanzania), and the Zanzibar Revenue Authority (Tanzania).

  • COVID-19 AND HUMAN CAPITAL: CATACLYSM AND CATALYZER (C4)

    COVID-19 AND HUMAN CAPITAL: CATACLYSM AND CATALYZER (C4)

    Principal Investigators

    Project: COVID-19 and Human Capital: Cataclysm and Catalyzer: C4 (2020-2023)

    Summary: The C4-project examines how the COVID-19 pandemic influences the decisions firms make regarding their human capital, how this varies across firms with different characteristics, and how these decisions affect individuals with different characteristics.

    The C4-Project is funded by the Research Council of Norway, and is conducted in partnership between NHH and the Federation of Norwegian Enterprise (Virke), and the Norwegian Union of Commerce and Office Employees (Handel og Kontor i Norge).

  • Women in Economics Network – Nettverksbygning innenfor Samfunnsøkonomi

    Women in Economics Network – Nettverksbygning innenfor Samfunnsøkonomi

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Women in Economics Network – Nettverksbygning innenfor Samfunnsøkonomi (2019-2022)

    Summary: The Women in Economics Network (WomEN) is a platform for interactions among female economists with the aim to and promote gender balance in academic leadership positions. WomEN will address two different issues to improve gender equality.

    1. Build a professional networking platform that increases the visibility of research projects led by women and helps recruit more women.
    2. Address individual challenges to limit the dropout rate of women.

  • Reducing Inequality Through Complementarities in Investments in Education and Health

    Reducing Inequality Through Complementarities in Investments in Education and Health

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Reducing Inequality Through Complementarities in Investments in Education and Health (2018-2024)

    Grant: 8 million NOK

    Summary: The primary goal of the project is to analyse whether inequality can be reduced through complementarities in investments in education and health. Data from Norway and the US will be used to study the dynamic processes through which multiple inputs interact in affecting the emergence or prevention of inequalities. The results will have important policy relevance both for Norway and other countries in developing cost-effective policies to address these inequalities.

  • Childhood gap, Parenting Styles and Life Time Inequality

    Childhood gap, Parenting Styles and Life Time Inequality

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Childhood gap, Parenting Styles and Life Time Inequality (2018-2025)

    Grant: 8 million NOK

    Summary: An important and growing literature across many fields, has documented a socioeconomic gap early in life that grows into adulthood, and persists across generations. There is, however, a lack of scientific evidence of the causal mechanisms driving this. We aim to investigate how much of the socioeconomic gradient reflects parental investments in children and children’s performance. First, we study how parents’ investments in the human capital of their children depend on parents’ moral, time, risk preferences and beliefs, and how this affects children’s cognitive and non cognitive skills. Second, we use randomized controlled trials and natural policy experiments to investigate how and when one should target human capital formation in childhood and adolescence. Third, we aim to identify causal effects of parents and higher educational institutions on the persistence of human capital accumulation across generations.

  • Child care for childhood and business development

    Child care for childhood and business development

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Child care for childhood and business development (2018-2022)

    Summary: The project will focus on childcare in Uganda to free up time for mothers to have their own businesses. Can supporting pre-school education improve (i) educational outcomes for the children and (ii) business development for the mothers? These are the two key research questions in our project. Other studies have found that child care has a positive impact on children's development and mothers’ employment decisions. No study, however, has explored these questions in Sub-Saharan Africa, and very few have used a randomized control methodology.

  • Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality, and Rationality

    Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality, and Rationality

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality, and Rationality (2017-2027)

    Grant: 167 million NOK

    Summary: Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality (FAIR) is a unique platform for collaboration between the Centre for Empirical Labor Economics and The Choice Lab. FAIR represents a truly multidisciplinary and outstanding set of national and international collaborators. 

    NHH Norwegian School of Economics is the host institution of FAIR and is strongly committed to this research initiative. FAIR represents a critical step for the long-term development of excellent research at NHH. FAIR is situated at the Department of Economics at NHH and was established as a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in 2017 with funding from The Research Council of Norway. 

  • THE CHILDHOOD GAP PROJECT

    THE CHILDHOOD GAP PROJECT

    Principal Investigator

    Project: The Childhood Gap Project (2017-2027)

    Summary: There is a sizable gap in school performance by gender and socioeconomic status, favoring girls and children of parents of higher socioeconomic status. These gaps open early in life, are persistent throughout childhood and adolescence, and may manifest into negative consequences later in life. The Childhood Gap project aims to improve our understanding of the causes, and consequences of these early childhood inequalities, and to inform the design of policies aimed at diminishing or closing these gaps. The Childhood Gap will advance the research frontier by conducting a large-scale study that will follow three cohorts of children over time, combining surveys, lab experiments, and administrative data. We will conduct a detailed mapping of childhood development by collecting data on the children, their parents, siblings, peers and teachers.

  • Understanding Paternalism

    Understanding Paternalism

    Principal investigator

    Project: Understanding Paternalism (2017-2022)

    Summary: The Research project Understanding Paternalism provides a truly novel approach to research on paternalism, by providing unique experimental studies of paternalism that can enhance our understanding of what drives paternalistic policies and paternalistic behavior in different spheres of society. 

  • FAIRNESS ACROSS THE WORLD

    FAIRNESS ACROSS THE WORLD

    Principal Investigators

    Project: Fairness across the world (2017-2018)

    Summary: In this project, we will study the fairness preferences, beliefs, and attitudes of 60,000 participants, covering 60 countries, in the Gallup World Poll 2018: Fairness preferences. Overall, the project provides a novel data set on the nature of inequality acceptance.

  • Fair inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance

    Fair inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Fair inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance (2016-2022)

    Summary: The project will address the following fundamental research question: What explains inequality acceptance? This question will be studied from different perspectives and by the use of a number of empirical approaches, including novel incentivized experiments on nationally representative populations, lab experiments, survey experiments, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It is a truly multidisciplinary project that aims at groundbreaking research. It will combine insights from economics, psychology, political theory, and philosophy, and combine structural and non-parametric empirical analysis with theory development.

  • Intergenerational mobility, early health shocks and public policy

    Intergenerational mobility, early health shocks and public policy

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Intergenerational mobility, early health shocks and public policy (2015-2019)

    Summary: There is increasing evidence in the literature that external conditions during pregnancy and early childhood have persistent effects on children across many dimensions of outcomes in adulthood. This literature shows that differences in endowments at birth need not be genetic but instead are influenced by environmental factors while the fetus is in the womb. However, there is little known about policy-induced variation in maternal and early-life health and about health shocks occurring to older children. While hospital access and well-child visits are considered to be an important factor determining the child mortality, only short-run outcomes of the introduction of clinics, providing care for pregnant mothers and their newborns, haven been studied. Our research aims to fill these voids in the literature by matching existing administrative datasets to a number of new datasets, including information on specific birth month beginning in the 1920s, information on the timing and spread of diseases, the implementation of programs for maternal and neonatal care from the 1930s onwards.

  • The welfare state and fairness in markets

    The welfare state and fairness in markets

    Principal Investigators

    Project: The welfare sate and fairness in markets (2014-2019)

    Summary: Almost all developed economies combine a market economy with a welfare state. Two essential roles of the welfare state are to handle inequalities created in markets and to provide insurance for market risks faced by individuals. The sustainability of the welfare state depends critically on its ability to fulfill these roles and to handle the potential trade-off between fairness and efficiency. The research project aims to provide new knowledge about how people perceive fairness in a market setting and what is seen as legitimate ways for the welfare state to respond to inequalities and risks in a market economy.

  • Health and the labor market

    Health and the labor market

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Health and the labor market (2013-2019)

    Summary: Recent work has highlighted the role of early childhood as a fundamental determinant of later health outcomes, and there is a large literature supporting this idea. However, much less is known about the role of later experiences, both within the family and in the labor market, on health outcomes of adults. To the extent that later experiences exacerbate early health inequalities, it is important to understand what the direction and magnitudes of these effects are. Our research proposes to fill this void using a new dataset on the health of individuals in their 40s in Norway as well as the cause of death registry from 1960 until today. By matching these datasets to administrative records on firms, earnings, education, and family, we are able to begin to parse out the mechanisms through which labor markets and family structure affect health and health behaviors.

 

EEA Grants

The EEA and Norway Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to reducing economic and social disparities and to strengthening bilateral relations with 16 EU countries in Europe. Researchers from the Department of Economics have received three grants from EEA since 2016.

  • Quantitative data about societal and economic transformations in the regions of the three Baltic States

    Quantitative data about societal and economic transformations in the regions of the three Baltic States

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Quantitative data about societal and economic transformations in the regions of the three Baltic States during the last hundred years for the analysis of historical transformations and the overcoming of future challenges - BALTIC100 (2022-2024)

    Summary: The project will preserve quantitative data by creating a data repository reflecting social and economic transformations in the three Baltic regions over the last hundred years in order to provide a quantitative analysis of long-term development trends in the region since 1920.

  • EquAl in ReacHing AspiRaTions

    EquAl in ReacHing AspiRaTions

    Principal Investigator

    Project: EquAl in ReacHing AspiRaTions (2020-2023)

    Summary: Evidence concerning inequality in ability to realize aspirations is prevalent: overall, in specialized segments of the labor market, in self-employment and high-aspirations environments. Empirical literature and public debate are full of case studies and comprehensive empirical studies documenting the paramount gap between successful individuals (typically ethnic majority men) and those who are less likely to “make it” (typically ethnic minority and women). So far the drivers of these disparities and their consequences have been studies much less intensively, due to methodological constraints and shortage of appropriate data. This project proposes significant innovations to overcome both types of barriers and push the frontier of the research agenda on equality in reaching aspirations. Overall, project is interdisciplinary, combining four fields: management, economics, quantitative methods and psychology. An important feature of this project is that it offers a diversified methodological perspective, combining applied microeconometrics, as well as experimental methods.

  • Youth Employment Partnership - Evaluation studies in Spain, Hungary, Italy and Poland

    Youth Employment Partnership - Evaluation studies in Spain, Hungary, Italy and Poland

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Youth Employment PartnerSHIP (2018-2021)

    Summary: How effectively are young people supported on the labour market? Project “Youth Employment PartnerSHIP” aims to answer this question by evaluating employment initiatives targeting youth in Spain, Hungary, Italy and Poland.

 

NORFACE

New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe (NORFACE) is a partnership of national research funding agencies in Europe dedicated to leading and developing opportunities for scientists in the area of social and behavioural sciences. Researchers at the Department of Economics have received two grants from NORFACE since 2016.

  • Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities

    Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities (2018-2021)

    Summary: This project analyses the role of families, peers and institutions in affecting the widening of the economic and social inequality that has taken place in many countries. In, particular it focuses on understanding the increase in the socio-economic gradients in behavioural problems, educational and labour market outcomes which also appears to have been stronger for men more than for women. Evidence from several disciplines suggests that while genes partly determine birth endowments, families, peers and institutions play a powerful role in shaping human capital along the lifecycle, through complex and inherently dynamic processes.

  • Human Capital and inequality during adolescence and working life

    Human Capital and inequality during adolescence and working life

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Human Capital and inequality during adolescence and working life (2018-2021)

    Summary: This project investigates the role of human capital in shaping inequalities over the life course. The project aims to shed new light on the process of human capital formation during adolescence and adulthood. The team takes a multi-dimensional view of inequality, over education opportunities and outcomes, employment and earnings, and study how they relate to individual circumstances, gender and family arrangements, how they develop over the life course and how they are influenced by the institutional background.

 

IFAU

The Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU) is a state-owned research institution in Sweden. IFAU’s scientific council awards research grants in November each year. Researchers at the Department of Economics have received one grant from IFAU since 2016.

Grants