Historical trial and error in macroeconomic and natural resource policies together with favorable international conditions have led to the relatively strong performance of the last decades.

The natural resources sectors dominate Norwegian exports, they represent considerable demand for the rest of the economy, and their tax payments help in sustaining a large public sector.

Research Agenda

Our research agenda has two components:

• Macroeconomic studies of the linkages between the resource sectors and the overall economy, financial petroleum funds, and optimal fiscal policy strategies;
• Resource economics, including microeconomic studies of the incentive structure within the resource businesses and the effect of regulations. A key feature of the overwhelming majority of this research is policy relevance.

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Unique position

NHH is in a unique position to undertake research on these topics. First, broad experiences across types of resources, time, and locations in Norway create variation suitable for empirical research.

Second, Norway has excellent economic data, on a level of detail yet to be used to study these issues.

Third, both resource economics and macroeconomics have for a long time been well-established fields at NHH.

Well established links

Our research is well aligned with ongoing work in other active research groups at NHH. For example, our research agenda has links to research in finance, labor economics, IO, and behavioral economics.

A key ingredient in our current research is the extensive use of spatial (GIS) data and micro economic data. In combination with applied theory and modern micro econometric techniques, this serves to improve the identification of casual mechanisms.

Despite the availability of suitable data, such as GIS data on oil exploration and production from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and employer-employee data from Statistics Norway, the use of such data in our context is still limited. Going forward, the ambition of the group is to expand the use of such data.