Publikasjoner

The extent of vertical coordination in the supply chain for salmon was limited until the early 1990s. During the last ten years, however, there have been several developments that have lead to tighter vertical coordination from salmon aquaculture production to the supermarkets. Most obvious is the rise of large, horizontal and vertical integrated companies, with direct ownership of production activities from hatcheries to fish processing and exporting. But we have also seen the emergence of long-term contractual supplier-customer relationships between aquaculture producing companies and processors or retail chains. This paper analyses the underlying economic forces driving the development towards tighter vertical coordination in the salmon supply chain and its consequences. Potential incentives for vertical coordination are economies of scale, market or bargaining power, risk reduction, and standards set by governments or private agents in relation to food safety, food quality and environmental effects. First, we present some general findings from the theoretical and empirical literature on vertical coordination in agriculture that is the most relevant for salmon aquaculture. Second, we identify structural differences between agricultural sectors and aquaculture that may lead to different outcomes. Third, we present explanatory propositions on vertical coordination in the salmon supply chain. We provide both theoretical and empirical support for these propositions. Finally, we briefly discuss economic performance and future developments of the industry.

Objective: People make different choices about how to live their life and these choices have a significant effect on their health, the risks they face and their need for treatment in the future. The objective of this article is, drawing on normative political theory, to sketch an argument that assigns a limited but significant role to individual responsibility in the design of the health care system Method: In developing our argument, we proceed in five steps. First, we review the literature on criteria for priority setting. Second, we explore the most prominent contemporary tradition in normative theory, liberal egalitarian ethics, with the aim to clarify the role of responsibility for choice. In particular we discuss where liberal egalitarian theories would draw the “cut” between the responsibility of the state (which is extensive) and the responsibility of the individuals (which is limited but significant). In the third step, we identify a priority setting dilemma where the commonly advocated criteria would assign equal priority. Finally, we develop a simple model in order to examine the implications of introducing a well-defined notion of responsibility for choice in a priority-setting dilemma of this kind. Results: Liberal egalitarianism holds individuals responsible for choices that affect their health, given that i) the illness is completely or partly a result of individual behaviour and choice; ii) the illness is not life-threatening; iii) the illness does not limit the use of political rights or the exercise of fundamental capabilities; and iv) the cost of treatment is low relative to the income of the patients. The paper shows how this type of considerations can be used to determine an optimal level of co-payments for diseases even when individual choices cannot be observed directly. Conclusions: It is possible to assigns a limited but significant role to individual responsibility in the rationing of health care resources. The liberal egalitarian argument captures a concern that is not captured by traditional criteria for priorities in health care. It can thus help policy makers in situations where the cost-effectiveness of different alternatives and the severity of the illnesses are approximately the same, or if the society wants to assign some weight to responsibility for choice. It can easily be linked to a system of graduated co-payments, but need not be.

Denne oppgaven er en presentasjon og en analyse av Kinas finansielle system. Det legges stor vekt på å vurdere systemets sunnhet, samt danne et bilde av sannsynligheten for at en finansiell krise vil ramme Kina i fremtiden. Analysen bygger hovedsakelig på en asymmetrisk informasjonstilnærming der tilstedeværelsen av moralsk hasard og ugunstig utvalg i bank- og finansmarkedene medfører ineffektiv allokering av kapital og nedgang i økonomisk aktivitet. Vi finner at Kinas finansmarkeder i stor grad preges av asymmetrisk informasjon. Sannsynligheten for en finansiell krise på kort sikt er likevel liten takket være den kinesiske valutaens begrensede konvertibilitet, lav utenlandsgjeld, overskudd på handelsbalansen og store valutareserver. På mellomlang og lang sikt er det imidlertid avgjørende for Kina å styrke sitt finansielle system gjennom ytterligere reformer for at landet skal kunne unngå en finansiell krise. Engelsk sammendrag This paper is a presentation and an analysis of the financial system of the Peoples Republic of China. Great emphasis is put on evaluating the system’s soundness and the probability of a financial crisis in the near future. Our analysis is based on an asymmetric information approach, where the existence of moral hazard and adverse selection in financial markets lead to an inefficient allocation of capital and a decline in economic activity. We find that the financial markets in China are very much dominated by asymmetric information problems. However, the probability of a financial crisis is small in the short run thanks to the limited convertibility of the Chinese currency (RMB), low foreign debt, a large trade-surplus and massive foreign exchange reserves. However, in the medium and long term reforms are required if China is to avoid a financial crisis.

Norske myndigheter legger opp til at naturgass i økt grad skal benyttes på det innenlandske markedet og at denne gassen skal handles på markedsbestemte betingelser. Følgelig vil prisen på gass levert til det innenlandske markedet bestemmes på det internasjonale gassmarkedet. Vi fokuserer på teoretiske prinsipper for prising av naturgass under ulike markedsformer, og det gis det en oversikt over gjeldende prisingssystemer og priser innenfor EU. Artikkelen identifiserer to hovedmomenter bak prising av naturgass: 1) Markedsform, dvs. hvor langt liberal-iseringen av gassmarkedene har kommet i de forskjellige land, deriblant utviklingen av handelsplasser/børser for mer kortsiktig handel med gass, og 2) Utviklingen innenfor regulerings-, klima, og avgiftspolitikken.

We study a policy game between exporting and importing countries in vertically linked industries. In a successive international Cournot oligopoly, we let the governments in the importing and exporting countries use tax instruments strategically to shift rents up or down the vertical value-chain. We show that the equilibrium outcome depends crucially on the relative degree of competitiveness in the upstream and downstream parts of the industry. With respect to national welfare, a more competitive upstream industry may benefit an exporting (upstream) country while harming an importing (downstream) country. On the other hand, a more competitive downstream industry may harm exporting countries.

We consider the problem of choosing among different distribution channels for combinations of different products, and how to price, or share the costs under the various alternatives, in an efficient and fair way. The problem could also be interpreted in terms of producing different products in a joint production process, and choosing between technologies with different costs and cost structures. More specifically, we consider technologies with combinations of fixed and variable costs. The variable costs are assumed to be linear and separable in the products, i.e. for a given technology and product type, we have constant marginal costs. The optimal choice of distribution channel / production technology will depend on the total production plan, or demand. That is, both the level of the total quantities demanded, and also the relative shares of the demands for the different products influence what is the best solution. In a marginal cost pricing regime, this would lead to prices changing according to production level and product mix. The price changes would be abrupt, depending on the boundaries between the areas where the different production technologies dominate. As a function of output, the marginal cost prices may show large increments or decrements depending on which production or distribution technology is the best for the given product mix. In this setting we will consider cost sharing rules using game theoretic concepts. More specifically, we consider Aumann-Shapley prices, which can be interpreted as a natural extension of average cost prices to the case of joint production of several goods. Throughout, we illustrate the pricing rules in a small example, with two products, and several technologies to produce or distribute them.

Natural gas has, over the last 40 years, come to account for a substantial percentage of primary energy consumption (i.e. including inputs to electricity and heat generation) in the United Kingdom (UK). In 2002, this percentage (37.3) was exceeded in only two other European countries, the Netherlands (46.0) and Hungary (43.0) (International Energy Agency, 2003). Although oil has generally attracted greater attention than natural gas, the effects of the latter upon the energy economy of the UK have, in certain respects, been more profound. Most North Sea oil production is exported directly from the UK (69.4 per cent in 2003 (DTI, 2004)) and the balance has been processed within an oil refining system originally established to handle imported oil. By contrast, the availability of natural gas from the North Sea from the mid-1960s transformed the UK gas industry from a producer of secondary energy (i.e. town gas manufactured from coal and oil) to a distributor of primary energy. This transformation had a geographical dimension evident in the contrast between the essentially local distribution systems of the town gas industry and the national system created to deliver natural gas.1 The development of this system has been accompanied by very significant organisational changes as the gas industry became one of several network utilities transferred from public to private ownership in the UK since the 1980s. This paper reviews these events from a geographical perspective. It is divided into three main sections. The first describes the growth of the natural gas consumption in the UK. The second places this empirical material within a policy framework. The third relates spatial variations in the availability and cost of natural gas to patterns of economic development and welfare.

Normativ teori for optimal finanspolitikk tilsier at skatteratene bør utjevnes over tid. Egenskaper ved de politiske budsjettprosessene skaper imidlertid en tendens til offentlig formuestæring eller gjeldsakkumulasjon som vanskeliggjør ambisjonen om skatteutjevning. Dette er spesielt kritisk i norsk økonomi siden den utbredte oppfatningen om stor statlig rikdom står i kontrast til et reelt langsiktig innstrammingsbehov. En implikasjon av dette er at myndighetene bør legge opp til institusjonelle ordninger i form av (fleksible) regler som i en viss grad låser politikernes handlefrihet. Handlingsregelen er et bidrag i dette henseende. Det argumenteres for at handlingsregelen har gitt en mer disiplinert finanspolitikk i senere år enn det som ellers ville vært tilfelle. I årene som kommer vil norsk finanspolitikk fortsatt være avhengig av en budsjettregel i form av enten handlingsregelen slik vi kjenner den eller en videreutvikling slik som antydet av Pensjonskommisjonen. Engelsk tittel og sammendrag: Fiscal policy rules: Less flexibility - better results? Normative theory for fiscal policy concludes that tax rates should be smoothed over time. The characteristics of the political processes that lead to the actual fiscal policy decisions do, however, imply a bias towards debt accumulation (or deterioration of wealth) and in turn higher future tax rates. This seems to be a crucial problem in the Norwegian economy because the widespread impression of a wealthy public sector contrasts the real long run need for a fiscal tightening. One implication of this problem is that an institutional framework based on (flexible) rules that restrict politicians’ freedom of manoeuvre is needed. In this respect the semi official fiscal policy rule called “handlingsregelen” is a valuable contribution

A crucial cornerstone in the market orientation literature is the relationship between market orientation and performance. Products and services should be designed, developed and offered to customers based on market knowledge, and human and physical assets should be combined to satisfy customers. However, we still lack knowledge whether the most market-oriented firms are the most productive and profitable, as few empirical studies have used objective performance measures. By applying data envelopment analysis (DEA), we develop a measure of relative productivity, and test the market orientation model with productivity as performance measure. Based on data from the hotel industry, our results indicate that market orientation has only modest effect on productivity. However, DEA-productivity analyses can be used to identify best practice in an industry, and if used properly, it can be a useful instrument in the process of designing products and services and be a valuable input into the market orientation of the firm.

In this paper we will consider issues relating to the historically low US saving rate and the large current account deficit. The approach is meant to be pedagogical, with an emphasis on clearly illustrating mechanisms behind these developments such that the readers more easily can make up their minds about what the future is likely to bring. The conclusions of the paper are as follows: Even though there are explanations indicating that the US currently should run a current account deficit (see especially Section 4), the tides must eventually turn. Issues relating to long run sustainability make clear that the US trade deficit must eventually be reduced in order to avoid a crisis in the future. This means that the relative price of US produced tradable goods will have to decline, and this will take place through a further depreciation of the US dollar. This depreciation does not have to be especially damaging for the global economy, but this seems to require that East Asian countries collectively allow their currencies to appreciate against the US dollar. A revaluation of the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, is key here. The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 presents the basic data relating to the two intimately releated issues of the US saving rate and current account deficit. In section 2 the relationship between the saving rate and the current account is formalized, and we consider the various ways in which an understanding of the forces behind developments in the current account can be achieved. Section 3 looks more specifically at explanations of the low personal saving rate, and tries to evaluate how critical the situation is. Section 4 considers the effects of global demographic developments on international capital flows.In section 5 we will look at more theoretical approaches to the current account. These give us a clearer understanding of underlying forces behind the current account. Section 6 takes a closer look at requirements for long-run sustainability. Section 7 concludes.

Lifestyle diseases constitute an increasing portion of health problems and this trend is likely to continue. A better understanding of the responsibility argument is important for the assessment of policies aimed at meeting challenge. Holding individuals accountable for their choices in the context of health care is, however, controversial. There are powerful arguments both for and against such policies. In this article we shall briefly outline the main arguments for and the traditional arguments against the use of individual responsibility as a criterion for the distribution of scarce health resources. We argue that one of the most prominent contemporary normative traditions, liberal egalitarianism, presents one way to hold individuals accountable for their choices that avoids most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The aim of the article is to propose a plausible interpretation of liberal egalitarianism with respect to responsibility and health care and assess it against reasonable counter-arguments.

In this paper we study the evolution of the regulation of the Norwegian aquaculture industry, in particular how European integration has affected the development of the regulatory regime. We analyse whether the transformation constitutes a transition from a national-based and corporative management system to a technocratic regulation regime that emphasises control and monitoring. The two perspectives of this study are, first, how global administrative reform (so-called New Public Management) has affected aquaculture management in Norway and secondly, how Norway’s position outside the European Community has affected the political authorities’ ability to maintain nation-based regulation of this industry. The paper concludes that there has been a technocratic and de-politicised change in the management of the aquaculture industry, geared towards cost efficiency and profitability, where transparency and harmonisation with EU legislation are important, while rural claims have less say

The objective of the paper is to analyse optimal prices for an input monopolist in the presence of asymmetric information about the size of the sub-markets, and when the sub-markets may provide either substitute or complementary products to the input provider’s own downstream subsidiary. The downstream firms produce products that may be vertically differentiated, but the degree of vertical differentiation is assumed to be private knowledge to the downstream firms.

I de fleste markeder møtes selger og kjøper gjentatte ganger i markedet. I noen tilfeller vil en bedrift kunne registrere og gjenkjenne egen kundegruppe i én periode. Gjenkjenning gir mulighet til å prisdiskriminere mellom nye og gamle kunder i neste periode. Når bedriften kan gjenkjenne kunder vil introduksjon av byttekostnader, produktdifferensiering eller en kombinasjon av disse kunne medføre at kunder står overfor ulike priser. Rapporten søker å gi svar på hvordan prisdiskriminering basert på kundegjenkjenning påvirker kunder og selgere. Andre aktuelle spørsmål er om det lønner seg for bedriften å prisdiskriminere og hva som skjer med konsumentenes velferd.

For fish stocks where the unit price of harvest is constant, unit harvest costs independent of quantity and non-increasing in biomass, regulation based on target escapement has been shown to optimise the net present value of harvest to society. Such a policy will result in a bang-bang regulation with closure of the fishery once the fish stock drops below the target and vice versa. The optimality of the target escapement policy has, under the same economic conditions, also been shown to hold for fish stocks characterised by stochastic recruitment. In this paper, the optimality of a target escapement policy for a fish stock with stochastic recruitment, but unit price of harvest decreasing in quantity, is empirically investigated, in the case of the Norwegian fishery on Norwegian spring spawning herring. For this fishery, it is found that a target escapement policy is no longer optimal.

I denne rapporten analyserer og priser vi livsforsikringskontrakter med rentegaranti. I kapittel 1 skriver vi rundt forsikring generelt og livsforsikrings spesielt. I kapittel 2 tar vi for oss teorien som er nødvendig for å kunne prise kontraktene. Vi ser bl.a. nærmere på opsjonsprising både i diskret og kontinuerlig tid. I kapittel tre starter selve analysen, hvor vi forklarer modellen vi bruker og antakelser bak denne. Videre utleder vi formler for verdien på forsikringskontraktene. Dette gjøres både i diskret og kontinuerlig tid, med både deterministisk og stokastisk rente. I kapittel 4 gir vi numeriske eksempler på kontraktene vi utledet i kapittel 3. Her lar vi også forsikringstakerne få muligheten til å avslutte kontrakten på visse tidspunkt før forfall. En komparativ statikk analyse for kontraktene under kontinuerlig tid med stokastisk rente gjøres i kapittel 5 og 6. I kapittel 7 og 8 konkluderer vi og kommer med forslag til utvidelser av rapporten.

Marginal productivity reward has been justified either as a way of ensuring efficiency or of respecting people’s self-ownership. Both these arguments have their limitations. In this paper we present a new and more general justification of marginal productivity reward that avoids the limitations of the traditional arguments.

According to liberal egalitarian ethics, individuals should be rewarded for factors under their control, but not for factors outside their control. A fundamental challenge to liberal egalitarian theories of justice is how to do this without violating minimal egalitarian and liberal requirements. The paper analyses the effects of two such requirements: the principle of equal reward and the principle of reward independence. The exact formulations of these principles depend on how we interpret the concept of reward. We propose two different definitions of reward, contrafactual and interpersonal reward, where both can be given a general and narrow interpretation. Given this, we show that it is impossible to establish a framework that is truly liberal egalitarian in all respects and that a generalized version of the egalitarian equivalent mechanism is the most plausible liberal egalitarian approach.

This paper shows how two important interregional transfer schemes, the foundation grant and the power equalization grant, can be seen as two different interpretations of equal opportunity ethics. It provides characterizations of both transfer schemes by the use of basic liberal egalitarian principles. Both the foundation grant and the power equalization grant scheme make use of specific reference levels. The paper also shows how reasonable requirements on the transfer schemes restrict the set of possible reference levels.

The present paper seeks to explain the pattern of income redistribution in a world of increased market income inequality. In some countries, larger market income inequality has been met by an increased redistributive effort, thus keeping the distribution of disposable incomes relatively stable. In other countries, larger market inequality has been accompanied by a reduction in transfers, thus leading to growth in disposable income inequality. Focusing on two constraints on tax and redistribution programs, namely dead weight loss and tax avoidance, our analysis demonstrates that the initial level of market income inequality is crucial in explaining how increased inequality affects redistribution.