Fra slagsmål til søksmål: Bøndenes forhold til retten i Norge på 1600- og 1700-tallet

    Tilbage omkring år 1600 var det lokale lagrettemænd, som dømte ved bygdetingene i Norge. Fra 1591 fik de tilknyttet en sorenskriver, som i førse omfang kun skulle tilføre rets- og skrivekyndighed, men ikke være dommer, men fra 1634 blev han meddommer og fra 1687 enedommer. I den forstand svandt bøndernes rolle ind. Trods det viser en undersøgelse fra Rendalen, at antallet af voldssager steg, men at de samtidig blev mindre alvorlige. Det må betyde, at bønderne i højere grad brugte retten til at løse konflikter. Både disse sager og tyverisager rummer tegn på, at bønderne blev dygtigere til at bruge retten. På den måde blev et stort nederlag på det formelle plan til små sejre i det daglige

Boganmeldelser

Book review

Circulation of Knowledge : Explorations in the History of Knowledge

Historians have long been interested in know­ledge—its nature and origin, and the circum­stances under which it was created—but it has only been in recent years that the history of knowledge has emerged as an academic field in its own right.In "Circulation of Knowledge", a group of Nordic scholars explore a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to this new and exciting area of historical research. The question of knowledge in motion is central to their investigations, and especially how knowledge is transformed when it circulates between different societal arenas, literary genres, or forms of media.Reflecting on twelve empirical studies, from sixteenth­ century cartography to sexology in the 1970s, the authors make a significant contribution to the growing international research on the history of knowledge

Adam Smith and Modern Economics.

In his Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith created an agenda for the study of the economy that is reflected in the structure of modern economics. This paper describes Smith’s contributions to four central areas of economic theory: The theory of price formation, the relationship between market outcomes and the public interest, the role of the state in the economy, and the sources of economic growth. In each case, an attempt is made to relate Smith’s contribution to the state of contemporary economics, showing both the similarities and contrasts between the respective approaches

Fair tax evasion

In this paper we analyse how fairness considerations, in particular considerations of just income distribution, affect whether or not people find tax evasion justifiable and their willingness to evade taxes. Using data from the Norwegian “Hidden Labour Market Survey” we show that individuals with low hourly wages and long working hours have a higher probability of justifying tax evasion. These are individuals that arguably are treated unfairly in a tax system that taxes an individual’s total income without taking into account how many hours the individual has worked. The same individuals are also more willing and likely to take home income without reporting it to the tax authorities. The results are consistent with a model in which individuals make a trade-off between economic gains and fairness considerations when they make decisions about tax evasion. Taken together our results suggest that considerations of fair income distribution are important for the analysis of tax evasion

Distributional effects of environmental taxes on transportation: evidence from Engel curves in the United States

Indirect taxes on transportation activities that pollute can correct externalities and close the gaps between private and social costs. However, policy makers often find such Pigou taxes difficult to implement because of political resistance due to possibly adverse affects on equity. For this reason it is important to assess the distributional aspects of environmental levies. This article estimates properties of the demand for transportation in parametric and non-parametric analyses of Consumer Expenditure Surveys for the United States and finds patterns in the resulting set of Engel curves. Private transportation using air flights and new cars has Engel elasticity above unity while public transportation via mass transit has Engel elasticity below unity. The findings can be interpreted in an important way since they show that a differentiated scheme of environmental taxes on transportation may function progressively. A Pigou scheme with larger taxes on modes of transportation that pollute more appears to coincide with larger levies on luxury modes preferred by richer households. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006Consumption patterns, Engel curve, Indirect taxation, Pigou correction, Transportation,

Tracing the Jerusalem Code. Volume 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750-ca. 1920)

With the aim to write the history of Christianity in Scandinavia with Jerusalem as a lens, this book investigates the image – or rather the imagination – of Jerusalem in the religious, political, and artistic cultures of Scandinavia through most of the second millennium. Volume 3 analyses the impact of Jerusalem on Scandinavian Christianity from the middle of the 18. century in a broad context