Research Grants

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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.

MSCA PF

The prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme (MSCA) is Europe's flagship programme to develop talent and advance research. The MSCA postdoctoral fellowships (MSCA PF) support researchers’ careers and foster excellence in research, targeting researchers who wish to carry out their research activities abroad, acquire new skills and develop their careers. 

  • Inequality in Work, Wealth and Welfare: I3W

    Inequality in Work, Wealth and Welfare: I3W

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Inequality in Work, Wealth and Welfare: I3W (2024-2026)

    Grant: 2,4 million NOK

    Summary: To effectively reduce inequality policymakers require a knowledge-based understanding of the facts, drivers and implications of it. However, inequality is a multi-faceted concept. I3W aims at documenting inequality in expected utility -- a consistent measure of welfare inequality, and a function of lifetime consumption, lifetime leisure, and life expectancy and their joint distributions. To achieve this, I3W will generate empirical knowledge and novel theories to explain the joint distribution of work, wealth, and welfare in the population using macroeconomic theory, structural quantitative models, and micro data.

  • Assessing Human Health Impacts of Maritime Air Pollution

    Assessing Human Health Impacts of Maritime Air Pollution

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Assessing Human Health Impacts of Maritime Air Pollution (2025-2026)

    Grant: 2,4 million NOK

    Summary: Maritime transport contributes to air pollution, which poses a public health risk, particularly in ports and coastal communities. Quantifying the economic costs of health impacts from maritime air pollution is essential for designing effective policies to reduce emissions from shipping. However, these costs are not well understood. The MSCA-funded MARHEALTH project will provide empirical evidence on the health impacts of maritime air pollution and the air quality and health benefits of green transition policies in the shipping sector. It will combine Norwegian administrative health and socio-economic data with geospatial data on shipping activities and air pollution. Additionally, the project will explore differential health effects across socio-demographic groups. These findings will assist policymakers in developing targeted mitigation strategies.

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.

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.

  • Merger Control in Dynamic Markets

    Merger Control in Dynamic Markets

    Principal Investigator

    Project: Merger Control in Dynamic Markets

    Summary: The project focuses on merger control in dynamic markets, in particular on an incumbent firm's acquisition of a startup. General questions that will be raised include: how well suited is the present legal test to capture an eventually block those acquisitions that are harmful for society? If the present legal test is not optimal, how could it be improved in order to better capture and block those most harmful acquisitions and at the same time avoid blocking beneficial acquisitions? Could an alternative to a change in the merger control test be to use § 11 (TFEU Article 102), the ban on abuse of dominance, to sanction a dominant firm that has acquired a startup? This includes both an ex ante approach through the classical merger control as well as the alternative ex post approach where we might apply § 11 (Art 101) towards a dominant firm that has acquired a startup in the past.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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, favouring 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.

  • 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.

 

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

Completed Projects