2016
Jeffrey Sachs: Norway, the World, and Sustainable Development
Time and place: Apr. 28, 2016 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM, Auditorium 1, Eilert Sundts hus
ESOP invites to a public lecture with professor Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University. Sachs is a leading scholar in sustainable development and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The global sustainable development challenge:
- The fight against poverty has made progress under the Millennium Development Goals, but more than one billion people still live in extreme poverty. Inequality and social exclusion are widening within most countries.
- The human impacts on the environment have already reached dangerous levels. The world urgently needs a framework for sustainable development that can end poverty, increase social inclusion and sustain the planet.
- Politics around the world too often focuses on short‐term issues. Governments often lack the timely information needed for long‐term sustainable‐development strategies.
- What can be done?
Richard Freeman: Profit-sharing and Workers Ownership – the new economy?
Time and place: Mar. 15, 2016 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Litteraturhuset, room: Amalie Skram
ESOP invites to a public lecture with professor Richard Freeman from Harvard University. Freeman will discuss how a combination of Shared Capitalism and Pension Fund Socialism can become a viable and more equitable new economy.
Would arrangements of inclusive capitalism be beneficial in Norway? What would be the role of unions under inclusive capitalism? How can one avoid repeating the failed Meidner Plan (Löntagerfonderna) in Sweden? Is inclusive capitalism the best way to more equality? These are some of the questions that will be raised in the lecture.
Enhanced productivity and equality
Worker ownership can enhance productivity and reduce inequality. Shares of ownership in capital elsewhere can spread the risk and give workers stakes in profits. The US has many examples of both. Employee Stockownership Plans cover at least 10 900 firms, 10.3 million workers. In other words there are almost fifty percent more workers with ownership in own firms than there are private sector union members. Pension funds offer profit-sharing via more widely spread stock ownership.
Worker ownership increases value added per worker by almost three percent in the long run. Firms with worker ownership are half as likely to go bankrupt as other enterprises. Co-monitoring helps overcome free riding because workers with a greater stake in results monitor others more closely and intervene more to reduce shirking. Stronger worker attachment, lowers turnover, generates more suggestions from below for improvements.
2015
Professor Debraj Ray (NYU and ESOP): Development Economics
Time and place: Mar. 23, 2015 9:15 AM – 10:00 AM, Auditorium 2, Eilert Sundts hus
ESOP invites to a Public Lecture for students with Debraj Ray, professor at New York University and affiliated researcher at ESOP. Ray has written the book "Development Economics" used in ECON1910.
Professor Debraj Ray is one of the most accomplished theorists in development economics today. In his book "Development Economics" he presents a synthesis of recent and older literature in the field and raises important questions that will help to set the agenda for future research.
2014
Ruth Berins Collier and James Robinson: Constitutions, democracy and development
Time and place: Sep. 19, 2014 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Auditorium 1, Eilert Sundts hus
What is the link between constitutions and economic development? Ruth Berins Collier and James Robinson give two perspectives on the interplay between institutions and economic development.
The ESOP Public lecture of 2014 will be given by the prominent scholars Ruth Berins Collier and James Robinson. Marking the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution, the topic is also relevant for much of ESOP's own research.We are equally interested in how institutions set the framework for economic life as in how economic interests determine the institutional layout. Much of the work is an interdisciplinary mix of political science and economics and in many works the formal institutions of the state are of particular importance.
Popular Politics 200 Years Later: Democracy 2.0
Ruth Berins Collier's lecture "Popular Politics 200 Years Later: Democracy 2.0" will be an extension of her co-authored book, "Reorganizing Popular Politics: Popular Participation and the New Interest Regime in Latin America", which examines the historical shift in the interest organizations through which ordinary citizens make demands. It proposes an agenda to extend this theme to the recent technological revolution and to advanced economies.
Constitutions and Economic Development
James Robinson will give the lecture “Constitutions and Economic Development”. The lecture will be based on his book “Why Nations Fail”, written jointly with Daron Acemoglu. In this book they argue that the reason why some countries are rich and some poor, is not due to climate, geography or culture, but institutions. They show that to invest, people need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it. And this means sound institutions.
Martin Weitzman: The Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change
Time and place: Jun. 23, 2014 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM, Auditorium 4, Eilert Sundts hus
Martin Weitzman, Harvard, gives a public lecture on "The Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change".
Martin Weitzman has for decades been a leading Economist in the world within several subdisciplines of Economics. Recently he has specialized in environmental issues such as climatic change and possible catastrophes. According to Martin Weitzman the issue of global climate change and what to do about it puts Economics to a severe test. How should the economic analysis of possible catastrophes be framed? Weitzman explores the role of structural uncertainty. While risks signify a random situation where probabilities are known measurable frequencies, uncertainty reflects a lack of knowledge at a deeper level. The difficulty in obtaining knowledge about extreme events implies fatter tails in the distribution of uncertain consequences. A catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages. One of his conclusions is that the impact of uncertain scale damage on cost-benefit analysis outweighs the impact of discounting.
2013
Lena Edlund and Andreas Kotsadam: The Female Vote and the Status of Women
Time and place: Oct. 4, 2013 12:15 PM – 2:30 PM, Auditorium 1, Ground floor, Eilert Sundts hus
For the 100 Year Anniversary of Norwegian women’s right to vote, ESOP has invited Lena Edlund and Andreas Kotsadam to talk about the current status of women worldwide from a development perspective. ESOP's prize for the best MA thesis on gender issues in 2013 will also be awarded.
- Lena Edlund, Associate Professor, Columbia University: "The power of "I do" - individual consent in marriage, the status of women and development"
- Andreas Kotsadam, Assistant Professor, ESOP, UiO: "The female vote - gender differences in political behavior''
- ESOP's Gender Prize Award Ceremony 2013
Lena Edlund is an expert on the economics of gender and family, with a particular focus on the status of females. She has been interested in the importance of female inheritance for the gender wealth distribution. She has also explored the legal framework governing formal marriages across cultures, among other things. Read more.
Andreas Kotsadam has a crosscutting focus on gender and female participation in his research, which covers the economics of the welfare state, development economics as well as political economy. Recent research includes the gender gap in political participation in Africa, the effects of parental leave, and the relationship between laws and attitudes.
Professor Vernon L. Smith: Crises, Bubbles, and Collapses
Time and place: May 3, 2013 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM, Auditorium 1, Eilert Sundts hus
Professor Vernon L. Smith, Chapman University, will give a lecture on how learning from economic experiments helps to inform the understanding of recessions and bubbles. Smith won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms.
Lecture title: Understanding Balance Sheet Crises and Recessions: Some Learning from Experiments
Abstract: Major long-lasting economic slumps such as the Depression and Great Recession, are among 11 of the 14 most recent U.S recessions, 1929 to 2007, that have been foreshadowed by declines associated with housing-mortgage market behavior. The most recent calamity is a consequence of the housing bubble and collapse, 1997-2012. Bubbles are commonplace in history; they are also common in laboratory experiments and I will discuss how learning from experiments helps to inform our understanding of these larger economic events. Severe balance sheet crises in the U. S. economy are rare and their collapse unexpected by economic and policy experts. As in the recent case, housing can lead to a balance sheet crisis in which households spiral into negative net equity as home values fall against fixed mortgage indebtedness; these conditions-not part of standard economic thinking-are mirrored in households' lender banks. Various recovery scenarios can be identified, none of them painless.
2011
Bob Allen: Why some countries are rich and others poor
Time and place: May 13, 2011 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM, Auditorium 2, Eilert Sundts hus
Professor Bob Allen (Oxford University) gives a lecture on the historical roots of global inequality.
Deborah Bräutigam: The Dragons Gift - The Real Story of China in Africa
Time and place: May 5, 2011 10:45 AM – 12:00 PM, Auditorium 2, Eilert Sundts hus
Professor Deborah Bräutigam gives a talk on her book about the Chinese presence in Africa.
Is China a rogue donor? Media reports about huge aid packages, land-grabbing, support for pariah regimes, regiments of Chinese labor, and the ruthless exploitation of workers and natural resources in some of the poorest countries in the world have sparked fierce debates. China's tradition of secrecy fuels rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities in China's growing embrace. This book tackles the myths and the sometimes surprising realities. It explains what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, and why this engagement has a chance of working better for Africa's development than decades of efforts from the West.
2008
Joseph Stiglitz: Dividend Taxation and Intertemporal Tax Arbitrage
Time and place: Aug. 26, 2008 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, Helga Engs hus, Auditorium 1
One of the world's leading Economists, Joseph Stiglitz, visits ESOP August 26. Professor Stiglitz is a Former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001.
Title: Dividend Taxation and Intertemporal Tax Arbitrage (by Anton Korinek and Joseph E. Stiglitz)
Abstract: We analyze the effects of changes in dividend tax policy using a life-cycle model of the firm, in which new firms first access equity markets, then grow internally, and finally pay dividends when they have reached steady state. We find that unanticipated permanent changes in tax rates have only small effects on aggregate investment, since macroeconomic dynamics are dominated by mature firms for which dividend taxation is not distortionary. Anticipated or temporary dividend tax changes, on the other hand, create incentives for firms to engage in inter-temporal tax arbitrage so as to reduce investors' tax burden. For example, a temporary tax cut - the type most likely to be enacted by policymakers - induces firms to accelerate dividend payments while tax rates are low, which reduces their cash holdings and makes them capital constrained when large investment opportunities arise. This can significantly lower aggregate investment for periods after the tax cut.
Martin Weitzman: The Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change
Time and place: June 23, 2008 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM, Auditorium 4, Eilert Sundts hus
Martin Weitzman has for decades been a leading Economist in the world within several subdisiplines of Economics. Recently he has specialized in environmental issues such as Climatic Change and Possible Catastrophes. According to Martin Weitzman the issue of Global Climate Change and what to do about it puts Economics to a severe test. How should the economic analysis of possible catastrophes be framed? Weitzman explores the role of structural uncertainty. While risks signify a random situation where probabilities are known measurable frequencies, uncertainty reflects a lack of knowledge at a deeper level. The difficulty in obtaining knowledge about extreme events implies fatter tails in the distribution of uncertain consequences. A catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages. One of his conclusions is that the impact of uncertain scale damage on cost-benefit analysis outweighs the impact of discounting.