Staying competitive: Challenges for a small open economy

• Friberg, Jon Horgen & Midtbøen, Arnfinn Haagensen (2021). Bortskjemte nordmenn og sultne innvandrere. Arbeidsgiverpreferanser og betydningen av etnisitet i norske arbeiderklasseyrker. I Ljunggren, Jørn & Hansen, Marianne Nordli (Red.), Arbeiderklassen. Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
• Barth, Erling; Bryson, Alex & Dale-Olsen, Harald (2020). Union Density Effects on Productivity and Wages. Economic Journal. 130(631), s. 1898–1936. doi: 10.1093/ej/ueaa048. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  We exploit changes in tax subsidies for union members in Norway to identify the effects of changes in firm level union density on productivity and wages. Increased deductions in taxable income for union members led to higher membership rates and contributed to a lower decline in union membership rates over time in Norway. Accounting for selection effects and the potential endogeneity of unionisation, the results show that increasing union density at the firm level leads to a substantial increase in both productivity and wages. The wage effect is larger in more productive firms, consistent with rent-sharing models.

• Finseraas, Henning; Høyland, Bjørn & Søyland, Martin G. (2020). Climate politics in hard times: How local economic shocks influence MPs attention to climate change. European Journal of Political Research. doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12415. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Most countries struggle to implement CO2 reducing policies. Implementation is politically difficult since it typically forces politicians to trade‐off different concerns. The literature on how parties and members of parliament (MPs) handle these trade‐offs is sparse. We use structural topic models to study how MPs in an oil dependent environment responded to a shock in the oil price that created spatially concentrated costs of climate policies. We leverage the rapid oil price drop between parliamentary sessions and MPs’ constituency adherence in a difference‐in‐differences framework to identify if MPs respond differently to variation in the salience of trade‐offs. We find that MPs facing high political costs of climate policies tried to avoid environmental topics, while less affected MPs talked more about investments in green energy when the oil price declined. Our results suggest that the oil price bust created a ‘window of opportunity’ for advocates of the ‘ green shift’.

• Finseraas, Henning; Røed, Marianne & Schøne, Pål (2019). Labour immigration and union strength. European Union Politics. 21(1), s. 3–23. doi: 10.1177/1465116519881194. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Barth, Erling; Davis, James Creece & Freeman, Richard (2018). Augmenting the Human Capital Earnings Equation With Measures of Where People Work. Journal of Labor Economics. 36, s. S71–S97. doi: 10.1086/694187. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  We augment standard log earnings equations for workers in US manufacturing with variables reflecting measured and unmeasured attributes of their employer. Using panel employee-establishment data, we find that establishment-level employment, education of coworkers, capital equipment per worker, and firm-level R&D intensity affects earnings substantially. Unobserved characteristics of employers captured by employer fixed effects also contribute to the variance of log earnings, although less than unobserved characteristics of individuals captured by individual fixed effects. The observed and unobserved measures of employers mediate the effects of individual characteristics on earnings and increase earnings inequality through sorting of workers among establishments

• Friberg, Jon Horgen & Midtbøen, Arnfinn Haagensen (2018). The Making of Immigrant Niches in an Affluent Welfare State. International Migration Review. doi: 10.1177/0197918318765168. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article explores how immigrant niches have emerged within two traditional working-class industries in Norway. Drawing on extensive case studies in urban and coastal areas, we analyze how employers perceive the availability and desirability of native-born and immigrant workers and discuss how these perceptions are related to underlying changes in the structure of employment. The article contributes to the literature by developing a general model of the formation of immigrant niches as well as pointing out the context-specific institutional conditions that explain how and why such niches emerge in the first place.

• Friberg, Jon Horgen & Midtbøen, Arnfinn Haagensen (2018). Ethnicity as skill: Immigrant employment hierarchies in Norwegian low-wage labour markets. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 44(9), s. 1463–1478. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2017.1388160. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Immigrants are often concentrated in particular, often low-waged, segments of the labour market and employers tend to assume that immigrants posit (soft) skills which make them particularly suited for specific tasks. Less scholarly attention has been given to the real and perceived content of these skills and how employers may shift their view over time. We contribute to the literature by examining changing ethnic employment hierarchies in two immigrant-intensive labour markets in Norway. Drawing on qualitative data from the hotel and fish processing industries, we describe, first, how different ethnic groups are allocated into specific jobs forming a clear hierarchy in the eyes of employers, and, second, how employers’ preferences for particular groups change as new immigrants enter the labour market. Theoretically, we develop the concept of ‘ethnicity as skill’, which points to the tendency among employers to equate ethnic group membership with a set of informal qualifications.

• Barth, Erling & Moene, Karl Ove (2017). Reell eller Ideell Konkurranse. Samfunnsøkonomen. 131(2), s. 92–102. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Konkurranse dreier seg ikke bare om priser og kostnader. Derfor kan ikke små åpne økonomier gjøre det bra ved bare å produsere det samme som andre land, på samme måte, men med lavere kostnader. Den reelle konkurransen dreier seg om hva en skal gjøre og hvordan en skal gjøre det. Den dreier seg like mye om organisering, institusjoner og fordelingspolitikk som om nye metoder, nye teknologier og nye produkter. Troen på anbefalingene fra institusjonsfri økonomisk teori kan stå i veien for den nødvendige institusjonelle oppfinnsomheten.

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• Dale-Olsen, Harald (2018). Wages, Creative Destruction, and Union Networks. Vis sammendrag

  Do unions promote creative destruction? In this paper we apply a shift-share approach and historical unionisation data from 1918 to study the impact of changes in regional unionisation on regional wage and productivity growth and job creation and destruction during the period 2003-2012. As local regional-industrial unionisation increases, wages grow. Lay-offs through plant closure and shrinking workplaces increase, but entry and new hires are unaffected. Overall, the increased unionisation yields a positive impact on regional productivity, exceeding the wage growth, partly due to the closure of less productive firms, but also enhanced productivity of the survivors and new entrants.

• Midtbøen, Arnfinn Haagensen (2017). Immigrant Niches and Ethnic Hierarchies In Norwegian Low-Wage Labour Markets. Vis sammendrag

  Increased migration from outside and within Europe have led to the development of immigrant niches in low-wage labour markets. A standard (economic) human capital approach would assume that processes of niche formation reflect the differences in skills that immigrant workers bring to the market. Sociological literature, on the other hand, have convincingly showed that immigrants’ social networks and processes of social closure, as well as employers’ stereotypes about immigrants’ skills, are equally important. However, less focus has been put on how immigrant niches emerge in the first place, and how ethnic employment hierarchies change as new immigrant groups enter the labour market. This talk has three objectives: First, to shed new light on processes of immigrant niche formation, paying particular attention to the role of native workers. Second, to explore the real and perceived content of employers’ perceptions about the soft skills of various immigrant groups. Third, to demonstrate how ethnic employment hierarchies change over time.

• Friberg, Jon Horgen & Midtbøen, Arnfinn Haagensen (2016). Structuring Liquid Migration: The Role of Labour Demand in Shaping Patterns of Mobility. Vis sammendrag

  This paper explores the role of labour demand in shaping the temporal outcome of labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe to Norway. We argue that within demand based migration regimes – such as EU free movement – material conditions of production, and thus the types and durability of employment that migrants are able to access, are crucial for determining temporal outcomes of migration. First, we provide in-depth qualitative descriptions of dynamics of labour demand within major immigrant labour markets in Norway, based on interviews with employers, workers and mid-level managers within construction, hotel and fish processing. Fish-processing represents a well-suited natural experiment, as wild-caught whitefish and farmed redfish gives rise to highly different temporal dynamics of demand, despite otherwise similar conditions of work. Based on these descriptions, we predict that migrants will demonstrate different patterns of return and settlement depending on sector of employment. We test our hypothesis using data from the Norwegian tax-register. By sampling all migrants who arrived a given year, we identify how many of them are settled in Norway and how many have returned home after a fixed time period. We argue that the “liquid migration” perspective indeed has merits, but that the significance of material conditions of production and dynamics of labour demand is overlooked in current debates about free movement in Europe.

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