Hypothesis: Restricting employers' ability to retroactively modify A-melding reports beyond one year will reduce fraudulent activities, such as tax evasion and illicit claims for benefits or subsidies.

Context: Currently, employers in Norway can revise A-melding (employment and income reporting) for previous periods, sometimes extending far back in time. While there can be legitimate reasons for these adjustments, they may also be motivated by fraudulent intent. Examples include reducing employer contributions, increasing employee eligibility for benefits, securing favorable loan terms, or obtaining subsidies and compensation they are not entitled to.

Proposed Study: This study aims to investigate the economic and behavioral impacts of limiting the period for making changes to A-melding to one year. It will also explore more efficient methods for detecting and controlling such retrospective changes. The hypothesis is that such restrictions will curb fraudulent activities without significantly affecting legitimate business needs.

This thesis is based on data accessible through the Norwegian Tax Administration. It requires the student/s to physically work at the administration either in Oslo or Trondheim. Contact me for more information.

Supervisor: Julie Brun Bjørkheim.

Hypothesis: The 2020 regulatory change that deprioritized the Norwegian Tax Administration in bankruptcy proceedings has increased the attractiveness of bankruptcy as a strategy for struggling businesses, thereby altering the dynamics of bankruptcy filings and negotiations.

Context: In 2020, a legal reform was implemented in Norway that removed the Tax Administration's priority status in bankruptcy and restructuring negotiations. This means that tax and duty claims now have to be negotiated alongside private creditors. The research will explore two main questions: (1) Has the Tax Administration initiated fewer bankruptcies since this change? (2) Has it become more attractive for businesses to file for bankruptcy because tax and duty claims can now be negotiated down?

Proposed Study: This study will analyze the impact of this rule change on bankruptcy trends, using a difference-in-differences approach to compare bankruptcy rates before and after the reform. Fixed effects will be applied to control for potential noise from the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will build on a previous master's thesis from NHH and existing analyses regarding whether businesses were kept “artificially alive” during the pandemic. The data will consist of panel data on businesses, tax assessments, bankruptcy status, and whether the Tax Administration initiated the bankruptcy.

This thesis is based on data accessible through the Norwegian Tax Administration. It requires the student/s to physically work at the administration either in Oslo or Trondheim. Contact me for more information.

Supervisor: Julie Brun Bjørkheim.

Governments and communities worldwide lose significant corporate income tax revenue each year due to multinational firms exploiting differences in tax legislation across jurisdictions, a practice known as profit shifting. While the exact magnitude of this loss is still debated, the presence of profit shifting is undeniable. However, much remains unknown about how and when firms initiate profit-shifting strategies.

This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by exploring key hypotheses, including whether firms begin profit shifting after being acquired by a company that already engages in profit shifting. By examining the pathways and triggers that lead firms to adopt profit-shifting practices, this research seeks to provide new insights into the dynamics of tax avoidance strategies and their proliferation across corporate networks. Potential analyses could include examining changes in tax strategies post-acquisition, variations across industries, and the influence of acquiring firms' characteristics on the onset of profit shifting.

Supervisor: Julie Brun Bjørkheim.

This project explores the use of conduit countries like Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Ireland, which serve as offshore financial centers facilitating investments in companies through third countries rather than direct investor-to-company flows. These practices help avoid regulations and taxes, such as withholding tax on dividends, lower corporate taxes on profits, and potentially untaxed capital income.

The study aims to analyze whether Norway exhibits similar patterns of financial flows, with ownership links to these countries disproportionately higher than others, and if significant dividends are channeled through these conduits. This could indicate that companies in Norway, both domestic and foreign, are using these centers for financing purposes. The consequences of these practices include not only lost tax revenue but also distorted official statistics on investments, leading to misleading perceptions of financial integration. The study will also review any relevant reforms in these countries or Norway that could impact these flows, drawing on insights from the Global Capital Allocation Project.

Data: Norwegian micro data

Supervisor: Julie Brun Bjørkheim.

This project investigates the impact of changes in withholding tax regulations on dividend payments to Switzerland, particularly following the amendment of a tax treaty that removed or reduced withholding tax on dividends. The study aims to assess the significance of Switzerland as a conduit country for dividend flows and provides an empirical analysis of the effects of these tax changes on dividend payment structures.

This project examines the effects of Swiss withholding tax reforms, focusing on the country’s position as a favorable conduit for dividend payments. Currently, Switzerland imposes no tax on capital gains, a 10% tax on dividends for private shareholders, and a 0% tax on dividends between companies under the participation exemption method. These policies create strong incentives for dividends to be paid in Switzerland, provided that the recipients are Swiss tax residents. The study aims to analyze the strategic implications of these tax conditions and their influence on international dividend flows.

Data: Norwegian micro data

Supervisor: Julie Brun Bjørkheim.

It is well known that the price of necessities, especially food products in Norway is higher than in neighboring countries. An important determinant of the price of necessities consists in tariff barriers. Tariffs in Norway are among the highest in the developed world. Norway charges particularly high tariffs on meat and dairy products, but also substantial tariffs on fruit and vegetables. In neo-classical models of trade such tariffs generate a negative shock to consumer surplus that exceeds the gain in producer surplus. Moreover, in the recent context tariffs have become increasingly controversial because they contribute to already rising prices in supermarkets.

A recent paper by Shapiro (2021) also highlights the environmental impact of tariffs. On the one hand, Norwegian tariffs displace agricultural production from abroad to Norway. This is good for the environment if production in Norway is cleaner than abroad and vice versa. On the other hand, tariffs affect the relative price of clean (low emissions per unit of produced good) to dirty (high emissions) goods. Shapiro (2021) finds that tariffs, on average, increase the price of clean goods more than the price of dirty goods. That is, tariffs act as an implicit subsidy on pollution.

In this topic you can think of the following research questions:

1. What is the benefit of the current tariffs to the Norwegian agricultural sector and how do they compare to the cost incurred by consumers?
2. What is the environmental impact of Norwegian tariffs? Is Shapiro’s conclusion that tariffs, worldwide, harm the environment also valid for Norway’s tariffs? If so, how can Norway introduce greener tariffs?
3. Anything else relating to tariffs that comes to mind.

Literature

Joseph S Shapiro, The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 136, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 831–886, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa042

Supervisor

Floris Zoutman

Mainly, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine energy prices across Europe have increased tremendously. The price of natural gas, which prior to the invasion ranged between 50-100 euro per MWh peaked to more than 300 euro per MWh in September of 2022. Prices of other forms of energy, particularly electricity, have seen a corresponding incline. At the same time the consumption of electricity has dropped significantly. Between August 2022 and January 2023 European demand for natural gas dropped by 19.3 percent. This decline challenges the traditional view that the demand for energy is inelastic. At the same time, there is confounding variation in the form of changes in weather which hinder the possibility to estimate the causal relationship between the price of energy and the demand of energy.

In this thesis you will aim to estimate the price elasticity of energy using variation in energy policy. While all European countries faced similar increases in the price of energy, the policy response between countries differed substantially. In some countries, government offered little in the form of direct subsidies on energy. Other countries, like Norway, offered generous subsidies effectively shielding consumers from most of the price increase. If the demand for energy is elastic, we should see that higher subsidies result in more energy consumption. On the other hand, of the demand for energy is inelastic there will be no relation between the two variables.

Data

Data on energy policies and energy/electricity consumption for several European countries.

Methods

Regression modes

Supervisor

Floris Zoutman

Recently there are many calls to create a practice of replicating empirical research. In this topic students can choose one of more than 4000 published papers with data packages and attempt to replicate the tables and figures in the paper. While replicating a paper, the students would learn a given method of analysis. The individual contribution of students would be to implement an additional analysis such as machine learning with the purpose of corroborating the results or answering an additional question on the base of the data.

Website: https://replication.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

The risk of accepting Airbnb guests is that they might run up all of your utilities. Are renters sensitive to this concern? Estimate the relationship between listings and electricity prices.

Scrape the Data from http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data/ and determine whether Airbnb listings in the last 2 years respond to electricity prices.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

Since 2015 European banks must disclose their operations in tax havens. These operations involve activities like complicated tax arbitrage strategies. While technically legal, tax arbitrage may be morally questionable and sometimes courts make rulings turning some tax arbitrage strategies illegal. How does the involvement of banks in tax havens correlate to their corporate governance? What is the relationship between a bank’s ethical credo and the ethicality of the bank’s behavior?

Starting point: https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/opening-the-vaults-the-use-of-tax-havens-by-europes-biggest-banks-620234/.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

A recent article identified a set of 30 last names of individuals involved in mafia activities in Italy. Are these names mentioned in the Panama papers, Pandora papers or other leaks? What are the activities of the involved firms? Are these mentions consistent with money laundering.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

Foreign individual and institutional investors are a fundamental component of global capital markets. On the one side, attracting foreign portfolio equity investments is a key policy objective for many countries around the world given the related benefits. On the other side, they pose serious challenges from a tax collection perspective. Traditionally, countries around the world rely on withholding tax to ensure the proper collection of taxes on foreign investors. Yet, existing withholding tax systems are far from being ideal and reforming them is high on the political agenda in Norway and within the European Union. Recently Finland launched a new innovative system called TRACE to make the collection of such taxes easier. Norway has also a similar system since few years now. 

The master thesis should provide an overview of the two systems, compare them and analyses whether the introduction of such systems increased investment in those countries and/or affected dividend payment policy of domestic companies.

Supervisor: Elisa Casi-Eberhard.

Charitable donations by individuals are an important source of funding for social services and public goods. This study aims at identifying important factors that determine when and how people donate using detailed information on the Norwegian deposit lottery (pantelotteri) in which people are able to donate deposits they would receive for recycling bottles and cans. For example, how did individuals respond to insecurity during Covid-19? Do news of natural disasters affect donations? How long-lasting are these effects?

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt.

In 2021, Palau launched its digital residency program, which offers foreigners a digital identity to access to all services within Palau’s emerging digital economy. However, Palau is not the first country to offer such a program. In 2014, Estonia was the first country to establish a digital residency program. It primarily targeted businesses that could start a EU based company and run it from anywhere, fully online.

For example, a foreign entrepreneur would be able to use his/her digital signature to conclude contracts throughout the European Union entirely remotely. So far, it has been a success with more than 50,000 applications as of 2019. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that the Estonian digital residency program has also been vulnerable to money laundering risks. What is the economic effect of such programs? Do they improve the business environment of a country or do they offer a high-tech route for suspect funds?

Supervisor: Elisa Casi and Mohammed Mardan.

Prior research argues that the inheritance tax is an important instrument to reduce inequality. In Norway, the inheritance tax was abolished in 2014. How did this effect income and wealth inequality in various parts of Norway? The aim of this thesis is to investigate these questions using micro-level data from Statistics Norway (SSB).

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt.

Government support to firms during the Covid-19 pandemic was comprehensive and supposed to quickly reach businesses. This may have lead to some firms exploiting government funds that were not eligible. For example, some companies may have been reconstructed to utilize the support schemes and then initiate bankruptcies in parts of companies. It may also be of interest to look at risk factors that arise in companies that receive payments from several support schemes. This study will contribute to an evaluation of how well the grant schemes have worked.

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt.

The lock-down of Norway on March 12, 2020 meant that many businesses had problems paying taxes and fees. In order to alleviate the burdens and avoid bankruptcies, the government, with effect from 12 June 2020, issued a regulatory provision that allows for deferral of payment for most tax and duty claims. This has led to a halving of bankruptcies compared with 2019 and raises several interesting, empirical questions: Have schemes led to companies being kept alive that would normally have gone bankrupt? How can the tax administration predict bankruptcy among firms?

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt.

A common tax planning strategy among investors is to sell their stocks the day before dividends are due, and buy them back on the ex-dividend day. This strategy, known as cum-cum trading, allows investors to avoid paying dividend taxes. The Norwegian tax authorities are considering to implement policies that make cum-cum trading less attractive in order to generate more dividend tax revenue.

Your task will be to see how cum-cum trading relates to taxation and other policy variables, using international stock market data. Questions that you could answer in this topic are: Do stock market experience excess trade around the dividend day? Does excess trade relate to the dividend tax rate? Do stock prices reflect the level of the dividend tax? Are policies aimed at combating cum-cum trading effective in other countries?

Cum-cum trading strategies have been detected in Europe. Are they present in the Asian and South-American market? Are these trades a global problem that contributes to rising inequality?

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman and Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman

A tax strategy among investors is to recast a dividend payment as a swap payment in order to take advantage of favoured tax treatment given to swap agreements involving non-US persons in the US. US stock dividents paid to non-US persons are subject to the dividend tax, whereas “dividend equivalents” paid to non-US persons as part of a swap agreement are not subject to any US tax.

Since a 2009 Senate hearing identified the tax evasion nature of these transactions, there has been little research on the topic. These transactions are likely the origin from which cum fraud schemes have arisen. Since 2009 the US has had reforms in their dividend tax and in the legislation surrounding the claiming of these dividend equivalents. What is the impact of these reforms on stock lending of US stocks?

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman and Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman

Inventors are an important source of innovation for any country. At the same time they are highly mobile and respond to tax incentives. Furthermore, the intellectual property they create (e.g. patents) can be used shift income to tax havens. How many inventors are involved in such tax avoidance behavior? This project will assess the importance of inventors in tax havens by combining data on international inventors with the Panama papers which have recently become available.

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt.

In political and institutional economy we think of countries as having extractive and inclusive institutions. Institutions are loosely defined as informal norms of behaviour. In an influential (but controversial) paper by Acemoglu et al. (2001) the type of institutions are shown to impact economic development. However, it is unclear whether what aspect of these informal norms have influenced countries like the Netherlands, Ireland and Bermuda to become tax havens?

Dharmapala and Hines (2009) have found that governance is an important factor that separates tax havens from non-tax havens. Better-governed small countries are more likely to be successful tax havens than badly governed small countries. Governance and institutions are closely related, but the link is not explored in this article.

In addition, the list of tax havens has expanded since 2009 and now we have continuous measures of secrecy and tax haven status, which can give better identification in re-examining the question: What makes a tax haven?

Starting point: Dharmapala, D. and Hines Jr, J.R., 2009. Which countries become tax havens?. Journal of Public Economics, 93(9-10), pp.1058-1068.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

The wealth tax is one of the most controversial aspects of the Norwegian tax system. Detractors believe that the wealth tax hurts economic growth by disincentivizing entrepreneurial activity and risk taking, and taking away a source of liquidity for business owners. Proponents argue that the wealth tax is a great instrument to reduce inequality.

In this project you will use data on Norwegian tax payers to evaluate the arguments of the detractors. Specifically, the goal is to understand i.) whether the arguments are valid empirically, ii.) how large the concerns are quantitatively. Specific research questions could be i.) does the wealth tax discourage individuals/business owners from taking risk, ii.) does the wealth tax reduce liquidity for small businesses, iii.) does the wealth tax reduce innovation or iv). does the wealth tax discourage savings. The answer of each of these four questions is of great practical relevance to policy makers that have to make a trade-off between the efficiency cost and the equity gain associated with the wealth tax.

Data: Individual tax return data

Literature:

• Berzins, Janis, Øyvind Bøhren and Bodan Stacesu (2019). Illiquid Shareholders and real firm effects: the personal wealth tax and financial constraints. Working Paper BI.
• Akcigit, U., Grigsby, J., Nicholas, T., & Stantcheva, S. (2018). Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century. NBER Working Paper.

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman

There is very little systematic evidence on the gender gap in crime. In particular, it is difficult to quantify it for financial white collar crime, as they do not find their way into police statistics and as there is little female presence on the top levels of companies.

In this project, we can use textual analysis tools to collect data from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on insider trading and other frauds. We can match the name of the defendant to a gender, and quantify what is the difference between males and females.

Then, we can correlate the gap, as well as the fraud itself, to past financial statements of involved companies in terms of gender representation in the board of the company and other indicators of company culture. Finally, we can compare the gap to other measures of female participation in the boardroom and determine whether white collar females seem more or less likely to commit crimes than white collar males. We can provide a partial answer to the question: Are companies going to become more responsible (do less criminal rule-breaking) if there are more females on the board?

Methods: Textual analysis, web crawling, R

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

The Oil for Food Program (OFFP) was a relief effort orchestrated by the United Nations to help the people of Iraq after the Gulf War. It lasted from 1995 to 2003. Leaks from classified reports reveal that there has been rampant corruption, from the bank that handled the Iraq escrow account, to the trucking company that was supposed to handle the logistics of food transport. Even the then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan has been implicated in this corruption scandal. By looking at important events that influence the survival of the OFFP and stock prices of companies bidding for contracts, by virtue of insider trading, we can find an indirect proof for corruption.

The methodology for this thesis is the same as in DellaVigna, S. and La Ferrara, E., 2010. Detecting illegal arms trade. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2(4), pp.26-57.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman.

During the COVID-19 pandemic most countries imposed Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) or lockdown measures in an effort to halt the spread of the disease. In a case study focusing on the Scandinavian countries we show that in Scandinavia the NPIs introduced by Norway and Denmark were extraordinarily effective in reducing the pressure on the health care system and mortality (Juranek and Zoutman 2020). In this thesis we want you to pick apart the mechanisms. Which NPIs are most effective in reducing the spread of the disease? When should countries introduce NPIs (traditional epidemiology suggests that early NPIs will be much more effective than the same NPIs introduced at later stages)? What is the relationship between mobility on the one hand, and the spread of COVID-19 on the other hand? All of these questions remain mostly unanswered and are of extreme importance to policy makers trying to stop a second (or third) COVID-19 wave, or trying to fight a new infectious disease in the future.

Data: the EU has created a database which contains an overview of all NPIs passed in EEA countries. The database also contains records on hospitalizations, which for many reasons is the most valuable measure in tracking the spread of the disease. Google has publicly available data on mobility. For Scandinavian countries we can also track data at the regional level.

Methods: the methods depend on the background and training of the student undertaking the thesis. Many meaningful relationship can be estimated through linear regression. However, it is also possible to use more advanced methods such as machine learning or epidemiological models.

Reference: Juranek, Steffen and Floris Zoutman (2020). “The Effect of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on the Demand for Health Care and Mortality: Evidence on COVID-19 in Scandinavia” SSRN Working Paper.

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman

All countries in developed countries have introduced Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing, handwashing, mask wearing and school closures, in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. The charge has up to now been lead almost exclusively by epidemiologists. In most countries economists are not included in the team of experts that advice the government on these decisions. That’s a pity, because economics, and especially, old-fashioned cost-benefit analysis has a lot to offer under these conditions. Roughly speaking NPIs all have their economic costs and benefits (i.e. their ability to halt the spread of COVID-19). From a cost-benefit standpoint it is possible to sort NPIs from “cheap” (high benefits, low costs) to “expensive” (low costs, high benefits). In case of a pandemic the objective of the government should be to keep the pandemic suppressed at the lowest possible cost. This means that we should pass NPIs in order from cheap to expensive. In particular, the most expensive measures should only be introduced in case cheaper methods do not suffice.

To give a practical example, handwashing is cheap in the sense that it has very little economic costs and is most likely quite effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing is relatively more costly as it comes with high economic costs (think for instance about spacing people out in classrooms, public transport etc.), and is probably not much more effective than handwashing. This does not imply that we should not practice social distancing, but it does imply that handwashing comes “first”.

In this thesis, you will do two things. First, you explain in more detail the principles of cost-benefit analysis applied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, you provide your best guestimates of the costs and benefits of NPIs passed in Norway using, for instance, academic literature, media sources and interviews with experts. Third, you apply your cost-benefit analysis with the guestimates to provide clear policy advice to Norwegian policy makers on which measures should come first.

Methods: cost-benefit analysis, literature review, interviews with experts

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman

Juranek et al (2020) study the labor market in the Nordic countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the pandemic has had disastrous consequences in terms of both unemployed and furloughed workers in all four countries. Sweden, comparatively does the best, and Norway is at the bottom (at least in the short run). Part of the difference in labor market outcomes is driven by differences in lockdown measures, which Sweden (in)famously abstained from, but there are also differences in labor market policies. Moreover, the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic itself may have a direct effect on labor markets. In this project, you will try to unpack the mechanisms focusing on data from the Nordic countries. As a first pass, you will extend the data of Juranek et al (2020) and replicate their analysis over a longer time frame. Afterwards, you will build a statistical model that disentangles the mechanisms between COVID-19 and the labor market using causal diagrams, regression analysis and/or machine learning tools. The results will be helpful in understanding how the pandemic affected labor markets, and guide policy makers in passing measures that fight the pandemic but minimize the damage to the labor market. Data: Labor market data from the Nordic countries available from the various statistical agencies, data on mobility available from Google and data on the spread of the pandemic, available from health institutes. Methods: Linear Regression, causal diagrams, machine learnings (the choice of methods can be adjusted based on the student’s background).

References: Juranek, Steffen, Jörg Paetzold, Hannes Winner and Floris Zoutman (2020) “Labor Market Effects of COVID-19 in Sweden and its Neighbors: Evidence from Novel Administrative Data” SSRN Working Paper

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman

Does it matter for teaching practice whether the school is new, old, well maintained, run down, a permanent building or temporary modules ("barracks")?

Supervisor: Arnt-Ove Hopland