PhD Defense:Business cycles and economic policy
On Friday 3 September 2021 Thor Andreas Aursland will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:
«Should we scrap the fiscal rule?»
Trial lecture:
10:15 in Zoom video conference, NHH
Title of the thesis:
«Essays on Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Policy»
Summary:
The thesis consists of three papers which address questions related to business cycles and economic policy.
The Norwegian Fiscal Rule (“Handlingsregelen”) ties withdrawals from the Government Pension Fund Global to the government budget to the fund’s value in Norwegian krone. The fund is invested in international financial markets, and thereby exposes the withdrawals to exchange rate variation.
This exposure is increasing in the size of the fund. In the first article, Aursland finds that a larger fund reinforces the effects of productivity changes and monetary policy stimulus on Mainland gross domestic output. Meanwhile, the effects of changes in government consumption are muted.
In the second article (joint with Ivan Frankovic, Birol Kanik and Magnus Saxegaard) they present the macroeconomic model NORA and analyze the how constraints on nominal interest rates and wage growth affect the economy’s response to fiscal stimulus during recessions. The researchers find that when either constraint binds, the effect of fiscal stimulus on gross domestic product is larger than in normal times. The effect of fiscal stimulus is larger than in normal times when both constraints bind, but the effect is smaller than when either of the two bind.
In the third paper (joint with Frode Steen and Simen Aardal Ulsaker) Aursland utilizes a detailed dataset of transaction histories from a grocery umbrella chain to analyze how Norwegian households adjust their shopping behavior when local economic conditions change. They find that Norwegian households substitute towards cheaper stores, bulk items, and private labels when the local unemployment rate increases. Furthermore, they show that households take more advantage of buying discounted items.
Defense:
12:15 Zoom video conference, NHH
Members of the evaluation committee:
Assistant Professor Morten Sæthre (leader of the committee), Department of Economics, NHH
Professor Fredrik Wulfsberg, OsloMet, Norway
Research Director Erika Färnstrand Damsgaard, Konjunkturinstitutet, Sweden
Supervisors:
Professor Gernot Doppelhofer (main supervisor), Department of Economics, NHH
Professor Tommy Sveen, BI Norwegian Business School
The trial lecture and thesis defence will be open to the public.