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Forskningsprojekter

 


ICT Spillovers and Productivity Growth

The overall objective of this project is to improve our understanding of information and communication technology (ICT) spillovers on productivity growth. Specifically, the goal is to quantify how important ICT spillovers are for productivity growth  and how distinctive characteristics of ICT can be modeled in a theory-founded econometric framework.
Period: January 2010 – August 2012
Amount: 2.140.723 DKR
Contact: Battista Severgnini

Immigration of Highly Skilled Labour

The project uses Danish data to determine what attract highly skilled immigrants, and what is important for how long they stay. Further, the project considers the fiscal implications of immigration.
The project is financed by NORFACE, and it is a part of a big network of subprojects. The home page of all these subprojects is: http://www.norface-migration.org/
Period: December 2009 – December 2013
Amount: 611.489 DKR
Contact: Jan Rose Skaksen

Advanced Automation Investment Model (AIM)

This project considers to which extend further automation may improve the competitiveness of Danish manufacturing firms. The project produces research on the link between automation and productivity and how it is related to the organization of the firm, the management of the firm and the internationalization of the firm. Further, the project develops an interactive benchmarking tool which may be applied by firms considering to invest in automation.
The project is financed by Industriens Fond, and further details can be found at the home page of the project: www.aimprojekt.dk .
Period: April 2010 – December 2015
Amount: 12.000.000 DKR
Contact: Jan Rose Skaksen

The Balance of Qualifications

This project constructs a balance of qualifications for Denmark since 1980. This balance is compatible with the National Account, and it determines how Danish qualifications are used for different purposes – e.g. which qualifications are used to produce export, private consumption, public consumption and investments. The project also determines the stock of qualifications. Finally, a part of the project seeks to determine which qualifications are necessary for success at export markets.
The project is financed by the Rockwool Foundation. The participants are: Nikolaj Malchow-Møller (SDU), Jakob Roland Munch (KU) and Jan Rose Skaksen (CBS).
Period: April 2009 - May 2012
Amount:  2.460.000 DKR
Contact: Jan Rose Skaksen

International Trade in Services

This project uses Danish registers to construct firm specific data on international trade in services. One part of the project considers to which extend different types of services are tradeable. Another part considers whether there is the same relationship between productivity and export behavior within services as found in many studies using data for the manufacturing sector.
The project is financed by the EPRN network. The participants are: Nikolaj Malchow-Møller (SDU), Jakob Roland Munch (KU) and Jan Rose Skaksen (CBS).
Period: 2007 - 2012
Amount:  400.000 DKR
Contact: Jan Rose Skaksen

Ambiguity Aversion, Asset Pricing, and Economic Fluctuations

This project examines the implications for asset prices and for how consumption fluctuations influence consumer welfare in a model where agents display ambiguity aversion. We aim at matching the equity premium puzzle and investigating how much consumers would be willing to pay to reduce endowment fluctuations to zero, thus delivering a Lucas-style welfare cost of fluctuations.
Contact: Mauricio Prado

Trade Liberalization and Informality

This project studies the relationship between trade liberalization and informality. The project involves the construction of a theoretical model with heterogeneous firms and the evaluation  of the model quantitatively by analyzing the Brazilian trade liberalization experience in the 1990s. Using Brazilian firm-level data, we aim at estimating the model and use it to determine how much of the 24% increase in informality from 1990 to 2000 can be attributed to the observed tariff cuts.
Contact: Mauricio Prado

Fiscal Capacity and Economic Performance

The project estimates the impact of fiscal capacity on economic performance, by exploiting differences in casualties sustained in pre-modern wars across countries. In the past, states fought different amounts of external conflicts, of various lengths and magnitudes. To raise the revenues to wage wars, states made fiscal innovations, which persisted and helped to shape current fiscal institutions. A follow up of this project intends to analyze in depth the channel by which fiscal capacity affects economic performance.
Contact: Mauricio Prado

Inter-temporal Choice in Denmark: A Longitudinal Field Experiment

Economists characterize utility in three dimensions, reflecting preferences over goods, time, and uncertainty. Using controlled experiments economists have already learned a great deal about individual preferences over risk and time. We propose to go one step further and conduct a field experiment in Denmark to directly elicit inter-temporal risk attitudes, the interdependency of risk and time preferences. Although this may sound like a technical issue, it actually lies at the core of deep theoretical and policy concerns about the consistency of economic choices over time.
We plan to implement a new experimental design in the field in Denmark, to obtain a sample that offers a wide representative range of individual socio-demographic characteristics; as well as a sample that can be used to both make inferences about the inter temporal preferences of the adult population of Denmark. The research team has considerable experience in conducting the proposed experiments.
The proposed field experiments will allow us to test several specific hypotheses. First, do inter-temporal risk attitudes differ significantly from risk neutrality? Second, are there identifiable segments of the population across which inter-temporal risk attitudes differ in a systematic way? Third, are individual discount rates constant or do they fall over time?
Information on inter temporal behavior is of obvious societal value. Policy applications include cost-benefit analysis of government programs, which often require welfare calculations to be made over projects whose uncertain impacts are spread over time. Theoretical applications include tests of propositions about the relationship between risk and time preferences, and the consistency of time preferences. Empirical applications include the study of savings behavior, insurance decisions, and asset prices. The results from this project will provide insights to ongoing debates in Denmark about the consequences of private investment and saving decisions
Period: January 2008 - January 2012
Amount: 3.000.000 DKR
Contact: Steffen Andersen

Gambling Addiction in the Financial Markets, Individual, Family, Market and Societal Consequences

Gambling Addiction in the Financial Markets" examines the extent of investment dependence in financial markets and what effect this kind of gambling addiction has on individuals, families and the financial market. Besides the natural financial consequences for those involved, the project will examine the negative consequences - ranging from effect on the individual's future health to the consequences for the stability of financial markets.
The project is motivated by a growing global trend towards ordinary people perceiving themselves as speculators who can and should make creative investments in everything from houses to stocks. A tendency that can be traced in the increasing coverage of financial markets in the media and in two of the latter years´ financial fads: Internet shares and residential investment. In both cases a large number of ordinary households have been tempted by the high yields with serious financial consequences, when the trend is reversed. Finally, the spread of online banking has meant historically good conditions for private investment. Following this development, we believe that compulsive gambling is widespread in the financial markets, and that this behavior has significant costs for individuals, their families and the stability of financial markets.
Period: January 2008 - June 2012
Amount: 2.640.280
Contact: Steffen Andersen

Revealing Economic Behavior: Register Based Experimentation

An important advance in economic theory has been the formulation of the life-cycle model, which is a unified model of consumption, savings and investment decisions over the lifetime of the decision maker. We propose using a combination of natural experiments to examine predictions of the life-cycle model and controlled field experiments to characterize the underlying preference structure of the model. The life-cycle makes some stark predictions about naturally occurring behavior, and field experiments allow us to identify what aspects of the theory require relaxation in order to explain economic behavior in naturally occurring environments. The upshot should be better theory that better explains behavior.
Our research strategy is to use administrative register data to recruit specific groups for experiments to reveal latent preferences and expectations of market outcomes: register based experimentation. Register based experimentation is necessary, simply because the group of interest is a small part of the population and these individuals are not easily identified through questionnaires of the general population.
Knowledge about individual saving and investment behavior has particular importance for policies that influence the inter-temporal allocation of resources. One immediate policy example involves the ongoing debate about the construction of pension systems. At a time when the Danish government is revising the state system of pensions, it is crucial that the policy makers have a clear understanding of individual preferences over delays in receiving economic gains, as these interact with the state policy to produce the actual outcome, which can then be assessed in terms of its social welfare.
Period: January 2012 - January 2016 
Amount: 5.795.911 DKK
Contact: Steffen Andersen 

Producing University Graduates: A Study of Demand and Supply in Education Markets

This project studies how universities and governments use admissions and funding policies to produce graduates.  In an equilibrium framework, we examine the extent to which these policy mechanisms can affect both demand for education and the skills that are supplied to the labour market.
Although education plays an important role in individual well-being and labour market productivity, very little is known about how to effectively raise the aggregate level of education within a country. This project will examine whether policy mechanisms available to governments and educational institutions can impact the level of education in the labour force. We focus on university-level education and examine whether alternative admissions and funding policies can affect the number of individuals who graduate from university and supply skills in the labour market.
The main innovation of our work is to explicitly model the schooling market alongside the labour market. Individuals, firms and educational institutions interact in these two markets.  In the education market, universities supply education to individuals who want to acquire skills.  In the labour market, individuals supply their skills to firms which produce output by combining capital with those skills.
Our research will address gaps in the literature by explicitly modeling how education is supplied.  Universities provide education using resources that are partly fixed in the short-run and partly vary with the number of students.  The fixed inputs include faculty, buildings, and other capital infrastructure.  The variable inputs are funding received from the government on a per student basis. We think of the quality of education as being produced with the amount of resources provided per student, and the quantity of education as the number of students offered admission. 
 We use as a benchmark the Danish policy environment prior to reforms enacted in 1993 to calibrate our model to data describing the number of applicants and graduates as well as the funding and enrollment levels. After estimating our model and fitting it to the data, we can use the model to evaluate the impact of various alternative policies.  We will examine the impact of three counterfactual funding mechanisms.  First, we will introduce an exogenous investment that raises the capital at universities. In the second experiment, we will raise the level of the funding granted to universities for each student who passes an exam.  Finally, we will examine the counterfactual policy where government funding is transferred to universities based only on the number of students enrolled, independent of whether those students pass their exams. The aim of these experiments is to identify efficient mechanisms for producing quality university graduates.
Period: January 2011 – January 2013
Amount: 1.683.408 DKR
Contact: Kelly Foley and Fane Groes

Risky Power: Choice of Technology, Security of Supply, and Market Power in Power Markets

This project explores the interaction between risky supply, stochastic demand and the organisation of power markets, and how these combine to determine the risk to supply security and adequacy – the risk of a blackout.
Read more about 'Risky Power'
Contact: Peter Møllgaard

Families and Firms: The Impact of Family Risk and Organisation on the Governance of Closely Held Corporations

 
'Families and Firms' investigates how risk, related to family structures and family development, affects companies. The overall idea is to evaluate the economic implications of the organisation of families and the realisation of uncertain events inside the families for the leadership and performance of closely held corporations.
Read more about 'Families and Firms'
Contact: Morten Bennedsen

The Impact of Ownership and Structural Reforms on Productivity

 
The current project will empirically address the impact of ownership and structural reforms on productivity by using financial and ownership data on Czech firms. The Czech transition process is a unique natural experiment, where increased openness has been accompanied by firm privatization. This study is likely to be the first one in a row of theoretical and empirical studies that address this issue.
Read more about 'The Impact of Ownership'
Contact: Lisbeth Funding la Cour

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Aktuelle forskningsprojekter på Økonomisk Institut


The Competitive Effects of State Aid

State aid is illegal if it distorts competition – but when and how does this happen? When oligopolists invest in product improvement, aid may harm competitors, even without affecting pricing directly. Aid that reduces the cost of capital will make the recipient increase its investment at the cost of its rivals.
Contact: Peter Møllgaard

Restructuring Electricity Markets when Demand is Uncertain: Effects on Capacity Investments, Prices and Welfare

Liberalisation of electricity markets often implies not only the introduction of competition, but also a change in the vertical structure of the industry. We compare an integrated monopoly, an integrated duopoly, and a vertically separated duopoly with respect to capacity investments, retail prices and welfare when demand is uncertain.
Contact: Anette Boom

Female Labour Supply: Why did Danish women begin working more than Italian women?

EU countries have agreed to reach an employment coefficient of 70 percent by 2010. Differences between countries are mainly due to a big shift in the female labour supply in the 60s in some countries. We explore the reason for this. (joint with Pietro Garibaldi).
Contact: Birthe Larsen

The Future Demand for Educated Labour in Denmark

The relative demand for skilled labour has increased continuously over the past two decades at least. This development is normally attributed to the technological development and international outsourcing. The purpose of this project is to improve the understanding of the skill types that will be demanded in the future.
Contact: Anders Sørensen

Is the Diamond Model Fallacious?

Many analyses of the long-run effects of fiscal policy, the design of the pension system and demographic changes are based on capital-only OLG models in the Diamond tradition. The disregard of financial assets serving as a temporary abode of purchasing power is not just an innocent simplifying assumption; it is likely to produce highly misleading results. E.g. a shift in the preferred time profile of consumption implying that the young generations save less (and dissave less when they retire) is supposed to have adverse effects on the stock of capital and total production. On the contrary, in an OLG model with financial assets (as in the simple classical model) the real supply of financial assets adjusts to demand leaving the real economy unaffected.
Contact: Niels Blomgren-Hansen

Family Firms and Corporate Finance

I study the interaction between the financial, governance and organisational structure of small and medium-sized companies and the organisation and structure of the family behind the company. Using a large dataset for Danish compnaies I investigate issues such as the cost of family succession, the importance of family finance and the role of family network for the growth and survival of closely held corporations.
Contact: Morten Bennedsen

Efficiency and the Meeting-the-competition Doctrine

It has become an established doctrine that a dominant company does not abuse its dominant position by reducing its prices in order to curb an entrant’s attempt to establish in ‘its’ market, as long as it only meets the competition, i.e. does not undersell the entrant. Nevertheless, underbidding the incumbent is often the only way, in which an entrant can hope to establish itself in the market, i.e. attract some of the incumbent’s customers. Consequently, the fact that the incumbent lawfully may and most likely will meet the competition to defend ‘its’ market is an effective deterrent. There appears to be a clear case for softening the meeting-the-competition doctrine. But how? What will be the likely effect of introducing a ‘you-have-played-the-card’ clause that for a significant period prohibits a dominant incumbent from reducing its price in response to new companies’ attempt to enter the market and/or a clause that prohibits it from reducing its price to ‘attacked’ customers only?
Contact: Niels Blomgren-Hansen

Air Traffic Investments in Greenland

There are several competing proposals for the future infrastructure. The project is to predict the profitability of enlargement of airports and runways in different investment scenarios.
Contact: Lars Lund


Sidst opdateret af Grethe Mark 08.02.2012