Do re-election probabilities influence public investment?

We identify exogenous variation in incumbent policymakers’ re-election probabilities and explore empirically how this variation affects their investments in physical capital. Our results indicate that a higher re-election probability leads to higher investments, particularly in the purposes preferred more strongly by the incumbents. This aligns with a theoretical framework where political parties disagree about which públic goods to produce using labor and predetermined public capital

Voting when the Stakes are High

Rational choice theories of electoral participation stress that an individual's decision to vote depends on her expected net benefit from doing so. If this instrumental motive is relevant, then turnout should be higher in elections where more is at stake. We test this prediction, by studying how turnout is affected by exogenous variation in governments’ financial flexibility to provide pork for their voters. By utilizing simultaneous elections for different offices, we identify a positive effect of election stakes on turnout.voter motivation, elections, turnout

Carrying the weight of uncertainty: Patients' long-term experiences after bariatric surgery

The prevalence of obesity and severe obesity has increased rapidly in Norway since the 1980’s. Severe obesity is a medically introduced term for large body weight that is connected to health risk and impaired quality of life. The health care services can offer people with severe obesity an interdisciplinary assessment and possibly a weight loss intervention, although not necessarily bariatric surgery. Bariatric surgery is an option in severe obesity, and seems to be the most efficient intervention in terms of providing sustainable weight loss and reduction in comorbidities for the majority of patients. However, surgery involves risk and long-term outcomes, and complications beyond 1- 2 years are currently scarcely reported in research. The aim of this study is to explore patients’ long-term experiences with bariatric surgery. The study has a qualitative design and is grounded in phenomenology. Data was produced by in-depth interviews more than five years after surgery. Seven women and 13 men with different backgrounds participated. The participants were aged 28-60 at the time of the interview. All of them had undergone a combined surgical procedure, called Duodenal Switch, which provides most substantial weight loss and carries a somewhat higher risk of complications when compared to other surgical procedures. The data consists of the patients’ experiences after bariatric surgery processes, as recalled and described in the interviews. The analysis was inspired by Giorgi’s phenomenological method. The process of reflexivity has been emphasised throughout the whole research process. The findings are presented in three separate articles. The first article presents findings based on the first eight interviews. The article concentrates on the intertwining of change and altered social encounters and negotiation of embodied identity after surgery. In the second article, findings based on the first 14 interviews describe eating as an existential and situated practice which remained a sensitive issue after surgery. The third article reports the 13 male participants’ experiences after bariatric surgery, and describes agency as pivotal for the men’s self-understanding. Thus, bariatric surgery was experienced as a radical intervention, yet deeply meaningful because it gave access to actively engage with the world and others. “Carrying the weight of uncertainty” constitutes a common and essential theme of the long-term experiences, across the presented findings. Despite sufficient weight loss and comorbidities in remission, the patients lived with health problems, illness, complications and worries about the future connected to body weight and health

Just experiences? Ethical contributions of phenomenologically-oriented research

How can phenomenologically-oriented research contribute ethically to societies of practitioners? In this article, we discuss how first-person research can create ethical and inter-subjective engagement and how it can contribute to conscious dialogues among practice, research, and professional communities. Phenomenology is our epistemological point of departure, and we illustrate practical ethical potentials through examples of phenomenologically-oriented research. To establish the conceptual groundwork for our examination, we primarily draw on the Norwegian philosopher Hans Skjervheim’s work on experiences, existence, and engagement. We review empirical examples from phenomenological research and texts to illustrate tensions between approaching experiences with openness and engagement and approaching experiences as just experiences. We go on to consider the ethical meanings attached to these tensions. We argue that because phenomenologically-oriented empirical research inhabits the power to engage, it offers insights into lived experience and may be a promising approach to developing conscious dialogues among research, practice, and society of fellow human beings

Sovereign debt crises and cross-country assistance

We provide a parsimonious framework to study the interplay between cross-country assistance and expectations-driven sovereign debt crises. Our framework extends the traditional single-country model of how multiple perfect-foresight equilibria are possible when a sovereign attempts to service public debt. The extension is that a self-interested ‘safe’ country may choose to assist a ‘risky’ country which is prone to default. Investors internalize the potential for assistance when lending to fragile countries. If the safe country cannot commit to fixed cross-country transfers or rule them out completely, assistance improves equilibrium outcomes only if the risky country is fundamentally insolvent in the sense that it cannot repay existing debt at the risk-free interest rate. If a default requires pessimistic expectations, an incentive-compatible (IC) assistance policy has adverse side effects.acceptedVersio

Forakt i språkdrakt

Debattinnlegg, Klassekampen 31. mai 2023.submittedVersio

Living the dream – but not without hardship: stories about self-directed weight transformation from severe obesity

The objective of this narrative study was to explore experiences and assigned meanings in stories about self-directed weight loss (WL) maintenance after severe obesity (SO). Design In-depth interviews were conducted with eight women and two men, aged 27 to 59 years, who had carried out self-directed WL from SO for 5 years or more. Two themes ran across the stories: Fear of weight-regain, and food and emotion. We performed a case-based narrative analysis of especially rich interviews that illustrate these. Results pointed to persistently cultivating new competencies, establishing new eating habits, re-establishing old physical-training habits, and forming new relational bonds. Participants reinvented themselves and their lives. However, the stories are not all about transformation, but also about new and old health problems. Conclusion The study directs attention to ‘different obesities’, not only to initial weight from which WL takes place, but also linked to the experiential horizons that the persons embody from childhood on. Furthermore, there was no way back in the present stories, always haunted in the wake of the lost weight. A double burden imposed on the person with obesity related to meta-stories in society deepens the understanding of this imperative: being vulnerable health-wise and exposed to stigmatization.publishedVersio

The Inefficient Combination: Competitive Markets, Free Entry, and Democracy

We show that under fairly general conditions, the combination of (i) competitive markets, (ii) free entry, and (iii) democracy is inconsistent with allocative efficiency. This fundamental impossibility result, which has not been derived before, holds whenever not only prices, but also policy, responds to factor allocations. We develop a theory where agents enter an occupation (more generally, enter an economic activity) and thereafter make a policy decision. Thus, each voter's self interest becomes endogenous to the entry decision. In our baseline model, the policy instrument that citizens decide upon is simply taxation. Workers in occupations whose services are in high demand by the government have an incentive to vote for high taxes. Voters in occupations whose services are in low demand by the government have an incentive to vote for low taxes. We show that the socially efficient size of the public sector cannot be sustained in equilibrium, despite free entry into occupations. We generalize our theory, and show how our impossibility result extends well beyond the baseline model. We also discuss how departing from competitive markets may affect equilibrium outcomes. Our analysis implies that when assessing causes and consequences of factor allocations, it is key to acknowledge how allocations affect not only prices, but also policies

Patentering av CRISPR-modifiserte dyr: Er beskyttelsen etter dagens patenteringssystem i takt med den teknologiske utviklingen?

MasteroppgaveJUS399MAJURMAJUR-

Petro Populism

We aim to explain petro populism|the excessive use of oil revenues to buy political support. To reap the full gains of natural resource income politicians need to remain in office over time. Hence, even a rent-seeking incumbent who prioritizes his own welfare above that of citizens, will want to provide voters with goods and services if it promotes his probability of remaining in office. While this incentive benefits citizens under the rule of rent-seekers, it also has the adverse effect of motivating benevolent policymakers to short-term overprovision of goods and services. In equilibrium politicians of all types indulge in excessive resource extraction, while voters reward policies they realize cannot be sustained over time