The Effects of Oil Price Shocks on Bank Profitability and Financial Stability in Norway

This thesis examines how oil price shocks affect bank profitability. We use this examination to assess the implications for financial stability in Norway. Our analysis employs a sample of commercial banks from 2012 to 2021. To control for persistence in profitability, we use dynamic panel data with a system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. This thesis differentiates between the direct and indirect effects of oil price shocks, where we explore the latter through non-linear relationships. The main findings are that oil price shocks have both a positive and negative impact on Norwegian banks through different channels. Credit exposure to the oil sector yields a positive, albeit small direct effect on profitability. Banks with a high level of non-interest income are also positively affected. Furthermore, we find a non-linear relationship between oil price shocks and inflation on bank profitability. Our results imply that the impact of the oil price shock is negative for high inflation levels. We present evidence that the negative effect is due to higher loan loss provisions. However, the overall assessment is that oil price shocks do not threaten financial stability. Even so, this thesis points out risk factors that should be considered.nhhma

Oljeprisens påvirkning på Oslo Børs : har oljeprisen historisk sett vært en ledende indikator på det norske aksjemarkedet?

I denne utredningen er det gjort empiriske undersøkelser for å gjøre rede for sammenhengen mellom oljepris og det norske aksjemarkedet. Hovedfunnet er at oljeprisen er en ledende indikator på Oslo Børs. Perioden 1986 - januar 2009 er benyttet som grunnlag for hovedindeksen. Det er utført regresjoner med daglige og månedlige avkastninger for alle indekser. Analysen er i tillegg gjennomført med indekser i norske kroner og amerikanske dollar, og både WTI og Brent er benyttet som uavhengig variabel. Alle empiriske analyser er også gjennomført når tilbudssjokk i oljemarkedet utelates fra tallmaterialet

Can big data and random forests improve avalanche runout estimation compared to simple linear regression?

Accurate prediction of snow avalanche runout-distances in a deterministic sense remains a challenge due to the complexity of all the physical properties involved. Therefore, in many locations including Norway, it has been common practice to define the runout distance using the angle from the starting point to the end of the runout zone (α-angle). We use a large dataset of avalanche events from Switzerland (N = 18,737) acquired using optical satellites to calculate the α-angle for each avalanche. The α-angles in our dataset are normally distributed with a mean of 33◦ and a standard deviation of 6.1◦, which provides additional understanding and insights into α-angle distribution. Using a feature importance module in the Random Forest framework, we found the most important topographic parameter for predicting α-angles to be the average gradient from the release area to the β-point. Despite the large dataset and a modern machine learning (ML) method, we found the simple linear regression model to yield a higher performance than our ML attempts. This means that it is better to use a simple linear regression in an operational context

Radiation damage allows identification of truly inherited zircon

Many studies have reported U-Pb dates of zircon that are older than the igneous rocks that contain them, and they are therefore thought to be inherited from older rock complexes. Their presence has profound geodynamic implications and has been used to hypothesize about concealed micro-continents, continental crust beneath ocean islands, and recycling of continental material in the mantle beneath mid-ocean ridges. Here, we combine single zircon U-Pb dates and structural radiation damage determined by Raman spectroscopy from a Pliocene mid-ocean ridge gabbro and from Cenozoic igneous rocks to test whether radiation damage allows distinction between contamination and truly inherited zircon. We find that Precambrian zircon found in the Pliocene sample has accumulated substantially more radiation damage than could be explained if they had truly been inherited. In the Cenozoic samples, however, we find that the radiation damage of old grains corresponds with that of young magmatic zircon, suggesting they are genuinely inherited.publishedVersio

Cardiac function associated with previous, current and repeated depression and anxiety symptoms in a healthy population: the HUNT study.

Objective: Symptoms of anxiety and depression often co-exist with cardiovascular disease (CVD), yet little is known about the association with left ventricular (LV) subclinical dysfunction. We aimed to study the cross-sectional associations of previous, current and repeated depression or anxiety symptoms, with sensitive indices of LV systolic and diastolic function, based on tissue Doppler (TD) and speckle tracking (ST) imaging methods. Methods: A random selection of 1296 individuals free from known CVD, hypertension and diabetes were examined with echocardiography at baseline of the third Nord-Trøndelag Health Study, (HUNT3, 2006–2008). The primary outcomes were LV diastolic function (e′) and LV systolic function (longitudinal global strain). The primary exposures were self-report on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Associations between outcomes and baseline exposures were available for 1034 (80%), and with previous and repeated exposures for 700 participants who also participated in HUNT2 (1995–1997). Results: Previous and repeated depression symptoms, but not current depression, were linearly associated with a reduction in e′. The average sum of two repeated HADS-D scores 10 years apart had the strongest effect on e′ (−8.3%; 95% CI −13.9% to −2.7%) per 5 units. We observed a sex difference between depression symptoms and longitudinal global strain (p for interaction 0.019), where women had a marginal negative effect. Anxiety symptoms, neither previous, current nor repeated were associated with subclinical LV dysfunction. Conclusions: In a healthy sample, confirmed free of CVD, past and repeated depression symptoms were associated with subclinical LV dysfunction. Thus, depression symptoms might represent a modifiable risk factor for future CVD.This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

The role of insomnia in the treatment of chronic fatigue

AbstractBackgroundThe definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) overlaps with definitions of insomnia, but there is limited knowledge about the role of insomnia in the treatment of chronic fatigue.AimsTo test if improvement of insomnia during treatment of chronic fatigue was associated with improved outcomes on 1) fatigue and 2) cortisol recovery span during a standardized stress exposure.MethodsPatients (n=122) with chronic fatigue received a 3.5-week inpatient return-to-work rehabilitation program based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and had been on paid sick leave>8weeks due their condition. A physician and a psychologist examined the patients, assessed medication use, and SCID-I diagnoses. Patients completed self-report questionnaires measuring fatigue, pain, depression, anxiety, and insomnia before and after treatment. A subgroup (n=25) also completed the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G) before and after treatment. Seven cortisol samples were collected during each test and cortisol spans for the TSST-G were calculated.ResultsA hierarchical regression analysis in nine steps showed that insomnia improvement predicted improvement in fatigue, independently of age, gender, improvement in pain intensity, depression and anxiety. A second hierarchical regression analysis showed that improvement in insomnia significantly predicted the cortisol recovery span after the TSST-G independently of improvement in fatigue.ConclusionImprovement in insomnia severity had a significant impact on both improvement in fatigue and the ability to recover from a stressful situation. Insomnia severity may be a maintaining factor in chronic fatigue and specifically targeting this in treatment could increase treatment response

Volcanic evolution of an ultraslow-spreading ridge

Nearly 30% of ocean crust forms at mid-ocean ridges where the spreading rate is less than 20 mm per year. According to the seafloor spreading paradigm, oceanic crust forms along a narrow axial zone and is transported away from the rift valley. However, because quantitative age data of volcanic eruptions are lacking, constructing geological models for the evolution of ultraslow-spreading crust remains a challenge. In this contribution, we use sediment thicknesses acquired from ~4000 km of sub-bottom profiler data combined with 14C ages from sediment cores to determine the age of the ocean floor of the oblique ultraslow-spreading Mohns Ridge to reveal a systematic pattern of young volcanism outside axial volcanic ridges. Here, we present an age map of the upper lava flows within the rift valley of a mid-ocean ridge and find that nearly half of the rift valley floor has been rejuvenated by volcanic activity during the last 25 Kyr.publishedVersio

A Highly Depleted and Subduction-Modified Mantle Beneath the Slow-Spreading Mohns Ridge

The Mohns Ridge is a very slow-spreading ridge that, together with the Knipovich Ridge, marks the boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea. In this study, we report the major and trace element composition of spatially associated basalts and peridotites from a gabbro-peridotite complex ∼20 km west of the Mohns Ridge rift flank. Formation of the ∼4–5 Myr crustal section involved accretion of normal mid-ocean ridge basalts with Na-content suggesting derivation from a depleted mantle source. This is consistent with the degree of partial melting estimated for clinopyroxene poor harzburgites using the Cr-number of spinel (14%–18%) and rare earth element modeling of orthopyroxene (16%–24%) and reconstructed whole-rock composition (14%–20%). If all the melting took place beneath the paleo-Mohns Ridge, a crustal thickness of ∼7–8 km is expected, which is nearly double the observed thickness. Orthopyroxene trace elements are not consistent with typical fractional melting expected for mid-ocean ridges but rather resemble that seen in supra-subduction zone peridotites. The geochemistry of both the basalts and the peridotites suggests that a water-rich slab flux in the past has influenced the mantle source. In turn, this caused hydrous melting which increased the depletion of the pyroxene components, leading to a highly depleted mantle that is now underlying much of the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridges and represents the source for the spreading related magmatism.publishedVersio