Foreign Direct Investment in Norway’s Manufacturing Sector
This report investigates the location advantages of the Norwegian manufacturing industry while focusing on economic as well as institutional factors. The economy relies highly on the exploitation of natural resources and only minor parts of its exports are technology based. Norway as a market for consumer goods is not only small in size but is also located at the periphery of Europe. Since the beginning of industrialisation, policies towards foreign direct investment (FDI) have had two targets: The first has been to keep as much of the resource rent as possible within the country and the second, to develop a domestic manufacturing industry. A variety of political tools has been used to achieve these objectives. Although various international agreements aim to reduce preferences for domestic production, several sectors in the Norwegian manufacturing industry remain protected by governmental policy. Norwegian MNEs have internalised former and present L-advantages into firm-specific assets. Domestic interest groups or the state partly control several of these enterprises. Compared to other small European countries, Norway has a relatively low share of FDI in the manufacturing industry. Nonetheless, over the last decades the country has experienced a substantial increase in FDI. This is partly due to investments of foreign affiliates of Norwegian multinational companies, reinvesting in Norway. In 1996, on an average, 18% of the employment in firms with at least 50 employees was located to foreign controlled firms while the corresponding figures in 1980 and 1991 were 8% and 13%. FDI mainly takes the form of mergers and acquisitions and is particularly significant in sectors with an above average R&D intensity and in other market segments with a relatively high producer concentration. The main industrial clusters as well as the production of consumer goods have experienced the major growth of FDI employment in the period 1991–1996. Often, these are also sectors with a high degree of governmental protection.
Corruption. A review of contemporary research
This report is an overview of contemporary research on corruption. The main objectives of the study have been to organise existing knowledge on corruption, discuss the major controversies within and across disciplines and to identify some areas in most need for further research with an emphasis on questions relevant for development policy. The review has been carried out as a joint study by researchers at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Bergen, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Oslo. Special thanks to the CMI and NUPI librarians for their assistance. Financial support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation, (NORAD) and extra time from our institutes are gratefully acknowledged. The survey may be somewhat biased towards economic approaches, reflecting the fact that the writing and editing have primarily been done by the economists Odd-Helge Fjeldstad (CMI) and Jens Chr. Andvig (NUPI). In addition, Tina Søreide (CMI), also an economist, has contributed to chapter 3. Inge Amundsen(CMI), a political scientist, has written chapter 4 and made several contributions to chapters 2 and 10. Tone Sissener (CMI), a social anthropologist, has written chapter 5. The study focuses on academic research. While a survey of the output from public commissions would be useful, they are not systematically covered here. Moreover, to make the survey accessible to a multidisciplinary readership, efforts have been made to present the more abstract and technical research in a non-technical way. In spite of its limitations we hope this survey will be considered useful – and be used – by researchers, students, development practitioners and aid officials.
Justice and cultural diversity in Guatemala : an analysis of the rights of ethnic groups in Guatemala based on two liberal approaches to justice in...
The report is a revised version of the author's thesis by the same title.
Forsvar og identitet: de norske friskusverdiene
(This article is in Norwegian): Dette kapitlet diskuterer forholdet mellom norsk nasjonal identitet og norsk forsvarspolitikk. Det argumenteres for at forsvarets legitimitet etter 2. verdenskrig har hvilt på et sett uuttalte verdier som var sentrale i ettertidens tolkning av, og fortellinger om, krigen i Norge. Disse krigsmytenes styrke ligger i deres fremstilling av historien i avpolitiserte og «naturlige» former. Mytene fremhever et sett verdier som ikke kan relativiseres, og som regnes som evige i norsk kultur. De er dermed sentrale verdier i norsk identitet generelt. Derfor har de vært viktige i ettertidens tolkning og legitimering av motstandskampen under krigen, men også for oppbygningen av det moderne forsvaret i Norge. Teoretisk forsøker artikkelen å vise det konstruktivistiske poenget at alt sosialt er historisk betinget. Det finnes intet essensielt, universelt og evig gitt i det sosiale. Selv de mest inngrodde «sannheter» har en historie, og er i stadig endring selv om vi ikke merker det. Imidlertid er nettopp en tilsynelatende inngrodd «sannhet» et eksempel på hvordan makten fungerer i moderne samfunn; den skaper og begrenser politiske handlingsrom.
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.