FAIR receives grants from the Research Council of Norway
FAIR is involved in three projects that have received funding from the Research Council of Norway.
This week FAIR received the good news that three of the projects our researchers are involved in, received funding from the Research Council of Norway.
Successful Advances in Fiscal ARchItecture (SAFARI): Evidence from a new tax in Zanzibar
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).
Mobilizing domestic revenue is crucial for governments’ ability to improve social and economic development through the provision of public services. Consequently, measures to enhance tax revenues receive much attention from policy-makers and researchers.
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 study will advance the academic literature on fiscal externalities and tax compliance and provide policy-makers with crucial information about the broader effects of tax reforms aimed at mobilizing domestic resources in low- and middle-income countries.
Automated Away? Causes and Consequences of Robots on Jobs and Families
The project is led by SNF and Kjell Gunnar Salvanes is the project manager.
A widely held view is that recent technological breakthroughs such as automation are shifting the comparative advantage away from humans to machines. In the race between man and machines, many scholars and commentators worry that the automation of tasks will fundamentally change the labor market, with large consequences for affected workers and their families. However, despite the global concern to understand the labor market impacts of automation, we lack causal evidence on the impact of automation on workers and the distribution of consequences across workers.
Automated Away? aims to fill the above knowledge gaps and make inferences on the possible causal relationships between technological change and restructuring of firms and how the labor market and workers and their families are affected by such changes. The project moves beyond the current state of the art by combining highly suitable Norwegian register data at the individual- and area-levels with innovative use of well-established causal identification methods.
When macro meets micro: Global challenges and heterogeneous responses in Norway (Macro-micro)
The Macroconomic group and Labour group at FAIR.
Program manager: Gernot Doppelhofer
As a small, open economy, Norway has always been exposed to global economic developments. Climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a sharp decrease in oil prices pose specific challenges to the Norwegian economy and the sustainability of the welfare state. Although most signs suggest that oil has been a blessing for Norway, not all workers gain equally. Hence, there is a need to develop rigorous economic policy recommendations on how to address the externalities and spillovers from the oil sector and the challenges of resource-rich economies in general. The unifying theme of Macro-micro is to use microdata and modern methods to study questions of macroeconomic importance and policy relevance.
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, robotization, and digitalization. Macro-micro will analyze inequalities arising from business cycles and challenges to the sustainability of the welfare state and study the heterogeneous effects of macroeconomic policy in Norway, addressing business cycle conditions, the shift to a greener economy, and the management of the Government Pension Fund.