Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards?

Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards? Economists and policymakers are keenly interested in this question – especially lately, as worker representation is widely promoted as an important way to ensure the interests and views of the workers. To investigate this question, we apply a variety of research designs to administrative data from Norway. We find that a worker is paid more and faces less earnings risk if she gets a job in a firm with worker representation on the corporate board. However, these gains in wages and declines in earnings risk are not caused by worker representation per se. Instead, the wage premium and reduced earnings risk reflect that firms with worker representation are likely to be larger and unionized, and that larger and unionized firms tend to both pay a premium and provide better insurance to workers against fluctuations in firm performance. Conditional on the firm’s size and unionization rate, worker representation has little if any effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that while workers may indeed benefit from being employed in firms with worker representation, they would not benefit from legislation mandating worker representation on corporate boards

What can we learn about household consumption expenditure from data on income and assets?

A major difficulty faced by researchers who want to study the consumption and savings behavior of households is the lack of reliable panel data on household expenditures. One possibility is to use surveys that follow the same households over time, but such data are rare and they typically have small sample sizes and face significant measurement issues. An alternative approach is to use the accounting identity that total household spending is equal to income plus capital gains minus the change in wealth over the period. The goal of this paper is to examine the advantages and difficulties of using this accounting identity to construct a population panel data with information on household expenditure. To derive such measures of consumption expenditure, we combine several data sources from Norway over the period 1994–2014. This allows us to link tax records on income and wealth to other administrative data with information on financial and real estate transactions. Using this data, we derive household expenditure from the accounting identity, before assessing the sensitivity of this measure of consumption expenditure to the assumptions made and the data used. We then compare our measures of household expenditure to those reported in expenditure surveys and to the aggregates from national accounts. We also illustrate the research opportunities arising from the derived measures of consumption expenditure through two applications: the first is an examination of how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household expenditure, while the second is a study of the transmission of income shocks to household consumption

Utviklingen i bønders inntekter mellom 2004 og 2020

Formålet med denne rapporten er å beskrive bøndenes inntektsdannelse og å dokumentere hvordan inntektene til bønder og jordbrukshusholdninger har utviklet seg sammenlignet med inntektsutviklingen for andre grupper. Rapporten viser at andelen av bøndenes inntekter som kommer fra jordbruk har falt mellom 2004 og 2020. I samme periode økte imidlertid bøndenes samlede inntekter betydelig: median inntekt etter skatt målt i faste kroner økte med 44 prosent mellom 2004 og 2020. Inntektsveksten var sterkere blant bøndene enn for andre sammenligningsgrupper. Rapporten viser også at spesielt en del yngre bønder har høy gjeld sammenlignet med andre grupper, og at jordbrukshusholdningenes gjeld har økt i perioden fra 2004 til 2020

What can we learn about household consumption expenditure from data on income and assets?

A major difficulty faced by researchers who want to study the consumption and savings behavior of households is the lack of reliable panel data on household expenditures. One possibility is to use surveys that follow the same households over time, but such data are rare and they typically have small sample sizes and face significant measurement issues. An alternative approach is to use the accounting identity that total household spending is equal to income plus capital gains minus the change in wealth over the period. The goal of this paper is to examine the advantages and difficulties of using this accounting identity to construct a population panel data with information on household expenditure. To derive such measures of consumption expenditure, we combine several data sources from Norway over the period 1994–2014. This allows us to link tax records on income and wealth to other administrative data with information on financial and real estate transactions. Using this data, we derive household expenditure from the accounting identity, before assessing the sensitivity of this measure of consumption expenditure to the assumptions made and the data used. We then compare our measures of household expenditure to those reported in expenditure surveys and to the aggregates from national accounts. We also illustrate the research opportunities arising from the derived measures of consumption expenditure through two applications: the first is an examination of how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household expenditure, while the second is a study of the transmission of income shocks to household consumption

Broadband internet and the stock market investments of individual investors

We study the effects of broadband internet use on the portfolio selection of individual investors. A public program in Norway provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables estimates show that internet use causes a substantial increase in stock market participation, driven primarily by increased fund ownership. Existing investors increase the fraction of their portfolios held in funds and do not increase their trading activity in stocks. Access to fast internet seems to induce individual investors to make better financial decisions and hence leads to a “democratization of finance”

Økonomisk ulikhet i Norge i det 21. århundre

Formålet med denne rapporten er å beskrive utviklingen i ulikhet i Norge i perioden 2001–2018. Rapporten beskriver ulikhet i inntekt og formue, fordelingen av skattebyrden og graden av progressivitet i skatte- og avgiftssystemet. I tillegg sammenlignes fordelingen av skattebyrden og progressiviteten i skatte- og avgiftssystemet i Norge med fordelingen av skattebyrden og progressiviteten i skatte- og avgiftssystemet i USA. Rapporten supplerer den offisielle inntekts-, formues- og skattestatistikken med ny informasjon om inntekts- og formuesfordelingen i Norge ved å sammenlikne målene for inntekt, formue og skatt som benyttes i offisiell statistikk med mer fullstendige mål for inntekt og formue. I målingen av inntekt inkluderes følgende tre inntektskomponenter som er utelatt fra inntektsmålene som benyttes i offisiell statistikk: (i) personlige eieres andel av tilbakeholdte overskudd i private selskaper; (ii) verdien av boligtjenester for boligeierhushold; og (iii) kapitalgevinster på bolig og annen fast eiendom og verdipapirer (unntatt aksjer). I tillegg belyser vi fordelingseffekten av verdien av kommunale tjenester ved å studere ulikhet i fordelingen av et utvidet inntektsmål som inkluderer verdien av kommunale tjenester. I målingen av formue benyttes et mål for boligformue som er basert på faktiske markedsverdier (observert i transaksjonsdata) i stedet for beregnede verdier fra skattemeldingen

Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards?

Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards? Economists and policymakers are keenly interested in this question – especially lately, as worker representation is widely promoted as an important way to ensure the interests and views of the workers. To investigate this question, we apply a variety of research designs to administrative data from Norway. We find that a worker is paid more and faces less earnings risk if she gets a job in a firm with worker representation on the corporate board. However, these gains in wages and declines in earnings risk are not caused by worker representation per se. Instead, the wage premium and reduced earnings risk reflect that firms with worker representation are likely to be larger and unionized, and that larger and unionized firms tend to both pay a premium and provide better insurance to workers against fluctuations in firm performance. Conditional on the firm’s size and unionization rate, worker representation has little if any effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that while workers may indeed benefit from being employed in firms with worker representation, they would not benefit from legislation mandating worker representation on corporate boards

Broadband internet and the stock market investments of individual investors

We study the effects of broadband internet use on the portfolio selection of individual investors. A public program in Norway provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables estimates show that internet use causes a substantial increase in stock market participation, driven primarily by increased fund ownership. Existing investors increase the fraction of their portfolios held in funds and do not increase their trading activity in stocks. Access to fast internet seems to induce individual investors to make better financial decisions and hence leads to a “democratization of finance”