Publications
Linking Issues : Should one bargain over two issues simultaineously or separately?
International negotiations on trade (e.g. GATT and TRIPS) have typically been of the packageform, and different issues have therefore been linked to each other. Trade issues have not been linked to e.g. environmental agreements in negotiations, however. This paper studies the outcome of linked bargaining, where two issues are simultaneously negotiated over by two countries. We notice that there always exist gains from linkages in bargaining, and that such linking will always occur in equilibrium if there is a pre-stage where the countries are bargaining over the agenda. The outcome under linked bargaining is compared with the outcome under separate negotiations, and the circumstances where a country will gain or lose from linking are characterized. The results help us to understand different countries’ preferences for linkages in bargaining.
Recent Advances in Growth Theory. A Comparison of Neoclassical and Evolutionary Perspectives
Research on economic growth has experienced remarkable progress the last decade. The neoclassical perspective has benefited from development of new mathematical methods and new approaches to market structure, economics of scale and spillover effects. At the same time evolutionary theories on economic development have appeared, partly competing but also complementary to neoclassical theorising. In this paper, the development of the two perspectives on economic growth is reviewed and they are compared with each other. Despite evident differences there seems to be convergence between the two traditions. The two perspectives therefore do not belong to different paradigms in the Kuhnian sense and they can hardly be categorised as two isolated research programmes in the sense of Imre Lakatos. Evolutionary and neoclassical growth economics draw inspiration from similar sources, they are overlapping and to some extent complementary. The two traditions also interact with each other.
Lovely but dangerous: The impact of patent citations on patent duration
What is the impact of patent citations on patent renewal behaviour? Patent citations are commonly used as an indicator of technology spillovers. For cited patents therefore, patent citations have a potentially ambiguous impact. On the one hand, patent citations may indicate a scientific breakthrough, a high value of the cited patent and therefore a long survival period. On the other hand, patent citations may indicate competing innovations that render the cited patent obsolete. By discriminating patents by technology field, it is demonstrated that patents that receive citations across technology fields survive longer than other patents. Patents that receive citations within the same technology field lapse earlier.
Local Elites meet Foreign Corporations : The Examples of Iran and Azerbaijan
Oil companies have jumped on the bandwagon of promotion of democracy and human rights, but without sufficient expertise in local conditions. What works in one country may backfire in another. Azeri democrats want the oil industry to stop propping up the Aliev regime and talk to them instead, but for an Iranian democratic politician, support from Western oil companies is the kiss of death. However, in both countries democrats call for more transparency.
Family-controlled Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa - A Survey of Research
The paper presents and analyzes recent research into child labor problems in Africa, mainly made by economists and social anthropologists. It focuses on the labor performed in African households and controlled by the family.
An Essay on Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa - A Bargaining Approach
The separation of children from their families have a large number of social and economic aspects. At least the economic aspects are under-researched. At the point of transition of leaving their families somehow the children have to be considered as separate decisionmakers. This is the perspective I adopt in this essay. The question raised is whether poverty, changes in social norms or external shocks to the family system such as the AIDS epidemic, lead the children to prematurely fend for themselves in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Security, integration and identity change
In this working paper Pernille Rieker attempts to contribute to a better understanding of both how the EU functions as a security system and what kind of impact the integration process has on national security identities. While security has always been the main reason behind the integration process, security and integration have usually been studied separately. Integration specialists have given more attention to economy than to security, and security experts have studied traditional security institutions and overlooked the EU. Rieker attempts to combine these two theoretical traditions by drawing on a combination of recent work on security communities and international socialisation. While the development in the Nordic countries will be used as brief examples in the final part of the paper, a more detailed analysis of these countries’ security identities will follow in a forthcoming study.
Forhandlingsmetodikk i WTO : Teoretiske resonnementer
Notatet klarlegger prinsipielle og praktiske forskjeller mellom de forhandlingsmetoder som har vært og kan komme til å bli brukt i WTO forhandlinger. Resonnementene baserer seg på økonomisk teori og forhandlingsteori. Selv om det gjøres betraktninger i forhold til Norges interesser generelt og fisk spesielt, er notatet mer som et rammeverk som dypere empirisk analyse kan baseres på. Arbeidet med artikkel ble utført på NUPI november 1999–januar 2000, som en del av et prosjekt finansiert av Fiskeridepartementet.
Integration and Regionalization - a political economic analysis
This paper examines the incentives for political integration in a situation with a non-excludable public good. The model emphasizes inter-regional differences in sizes and preferences for the public good. In such a two-country model, Ellingsen (1998)1 characterizes the cases in which integration is an equilibrium. This paper includes a third region, and finds that a whole range of interesting and observable issues arise, which the two-country model is unable to capture. Depending on the relative differences in sizes and preferences among regions, the integration problem may be described as a prisoner’s dilemma, a coordination game or as a hawk-dove game. Multiple equilibria may exist as well as equilibria with no integration; partly integration; conditionally integration and exclusion from the coalition. The extreme case where the public good is global (beneficial to all) is discussed, as well as an extreme where it is local (beneficial only to the closest neighbors).
Globalisation and industrial location: The impact of trade policy when geography matters
The paper shows how industrial location and welfare depends on “most-favoured nation” (MFN) versus distance-related trade barriers, using a monopolistic competition model with regions located along a “Hotelling” line or on a square plain. Manufacturing production will cluster close to the periphery if transport costs are relatively high, but in central areas if MFN barriers are relatively high. The peripheries will be at a disadvantage, which increases when trade barriers are reduced. When countries or trading blocs are formed, a core-periphery pattern emerges within each of them. While lower transport costs create more centralisation within countries, lower MFN barriers between countries have the opposite effect.