News - Page 6

Application deadline is February 15th 2009.

ESOP has a limited number of scholarships available for Master Students who plan to write their Master's thesis during the Spring Semester 2009. The thesis must be relevant to ESOP's research areas. Application deadline is February 5, 2009.

New working paper by Halvor Mehlum, Karl Ove Moene, and Ragnar Torvik.

New working paper by Cappelen, Moene, Sørensen, and Tungodden.

October 9 and 10, 2008. Aud 6, Eilert Sundts building.

Aug 26, 2008 10.15 AM - 12.00 PM, University of Oslo, Helga Engs building, Auditorium 1: Joseph Stiglitz gives a public research lecture on "Dividend Taxation and Intertemporal Tax Arbitrage".

Nilanjan Banik from the Institute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai, India is visiting our center on June 11th. He will be presenting a paper on "Growth versus Development: The Case of Asia" (co-authored with Basudeb Biswas and Sanjib Sarkar). The authors build a social development index, incorporating the effect of growth on distribution of income, and they study how growth is affecting social development in fast-growing economies in Asia.

Public reporting of school performances is a feature of school accountability systems that are increasingly common across OECD countries. A new kind of school quality indicators were published for the first time in Oslo in November 2005, and received considerable media attention. Jon H. Fiva, a postdoctoral fellow at ESOP, and Lars J. Kirkebøen, researcher at Statistics Norway, investigate whether the housing market responded to the previously unknown information. If parents value high quality schools and the school performance indicators provided new information the housing market is expected to react accordingly.

ESOP has a limited number of scholarships available for Master Students who plan to write their Master's thesis during the fall semester 2008. The thesis must be relevant to ESOP's research areas. (Application deadline is the 15th of June 2008)

The leading European Labor Economist, Steve Machin, is visiting ESOP. He gives a seminar Monday April 7 on Panics in the Streets of London - Police, Crime and the July 2005 Terror Attacks. Steve Machin is working at the University College London (UCL) and at the Centre for the Economics of Education and Economic Performance (at London School of Economics).

Erling Barth, Bernt Bratsberg, Torbjørn Hægeland, and Oddbjørn Raaum have examined the impact of performance-related pay on wage differentials within firms. The empirical contribution utilizes two recent Norwegian employer surveys, linked to a full set of employee records. Their study shows that introduction of performance-related pay raises residual wage inequality in non-union firms, but not in firms with high union density. Their findings suggest that even though performance-related pay appears to be on the rise, the overall impact on wage dispersion is likely to be small, particularly in European countries with strong unions.

The Belgian Economist Jean Marie Baland visits ESOP 1st to 4th April. Baland is a Leading Development Economist with influential contributions on Inequality and the Commons, and the Economics of Child Labor, Land Markets and Political Power.

One year after its beginning, ESOP is well on track. Our basic mission from day one has of course been to get on with our research. We are happy to report that the start has been productive. We follow the main lines of our research plan and have initiated several concrete research projects. Papers from these projects are submitted to international journals and some of them have already been accepted for publication. We are also pleased to report that our main projects have caught a lot of media attention.

In the work "King of the hill" Kalle Moene and Halvor Mehlum analyze a never ending competition between two parties, which may be political parties or business rivals, war lords or religious groups. The authors discuss how the stakes involved are affected when victory one period is a benefit in the next.

Working paper by Jo Thori Lind and Dominic Rohner: Standard models of electoral competition say that countries with many poor voters should have a high political pressure for increased redistribution. This seems not to be the case; in reality there is less redistribution than these models predict, and the level of redistribution is not highest in the countries these models predict. Jo Thori Lind, a postdoctoral fellow at ESOP, and Dominic Rohner, lecturer at University of York and ESOP network member, introduce a new mechanism that can account for this "redistribution puzzle", based on an unequal distribution of political knowledge.

1-2 positions as Research Fellows in Economics, SKO 1017, are vacant at ESOP (Centre for the study of Equality, Social Organization, and Performance) at the Department of Economics. Candidates for the vacant positions should have a research interest in areas such as comparative welfare state arrangements, mechanisms of social mobility, studies of institutional arrangements, forms of redistribution and labor organization. (Application deadline is expired.)

ESOP moved to 10th floor, Eilert Sundts hus, on Wednesday 19th December. Some of ESOP's staff moved to new offices, in addition the new premises include a meeting room, rooms for guest researchers/visitors, a room for research assistants, and a project room.

1-2 positions as post-doctoral fellowships in economics, SKO 1352, are vacant at ESOP at the Department of Economics. Candidates for the vacant positions should have a research interest in areas such as comparative welfare state arrangements, mechanisms of social mobility, studies of institutional arrangements, forms of redistribution and labor organization. (Application deadline is expired)

ESOP has a limited number of stipends available for master students who plan to write their master's thesis during the spring semester 2008. The thesis must be relevant to ESOP's research areas. (Application deadline is expired.)

The first ESOP workshop took place at the University of Oslo on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th October 2007, with the title 'Perspectives on Equality and Welfare spending'. Presentations were given by Torben Andersen, Erling Barth, Pierre Cahuc, Joan Esteban, Bertil Holmlund, Mari Rege, Åsa Rosén, Erik Sørensen, Marie-Anne Valfort, and Kalle Moene.

Low income disparity, high taxes and generous welfare benefits are the perfect recipe for economic disaster - in theory. But the Nordic welfare states are prospering with exactly that formula. Now, 55 top-notch researchers at the ESOP research centre, one of Norway's eight new Centres of Excellence, will investigate why. (News from the Research Council of Norway)

Prof. Raquel Fernandez, who is adjunct professor at ESOP, will be one of the keynote speakers at the Department of Economics' 75th anniversary on the 20th September. She will give a lecture on the issue 'Culture and Economics.' Raquel Fernandez is professor in Economics at New York University.

The official opening of ESOP will take place at a ceremony at the University of Oslo on Monday 24th September. ESOP and four other new Centres of Excellence at the University of Oslo will then receive the placards showing that they have been awarded status as Centres of Excellence by the Norwegian Research Council.

ESOP and The Centre for Ethics and Economics (NHH) organize the course "Equality: Theory, Political Economy, and Prospects" from 28. May to 01. June 2007.

We currently have 1-2 research fellowships available. (Application deadline is expired)