LN-11 Trygve Haavelmo from Frisch's laboratory to Cowles Commission. - - PDF document

LN-11 Trygve Haavelmo from Frisch's laboratory to Cowles Commission.

The Oslo School Oslo School (Ragnar Frisch, Trygve Haavelmo, Leif Johansen) The smooth takeover of the Norwegian government administration by Frisch’s pupils after 1945 and the professionalization of economics in Norway. Frisch and his pupils. Haavelmo (1911-99) Graduated 1933. Assistant Frisch’s Institute from 1933. Grant for 3 months in London 1936 (Neyman). Travelled spring term 1937 to Berlin, Paris, Geneva (Tinbergen), Oxford (Marschak). Teacher statistics Aarhus University 1938/39. To USA June 1939. Nortraship, New York 1942-43; Norwegian government,

• Wash. DC 1944-45; Cowles Commission, Chicago 1946. Back to Norway March
• 1947. Norwegian Economic Planning Administration 1947/48. Professor 1948-

79. Briefly summarized: Haavelmo worked 4 years for Frisch at the Institute. Then he travelled in Europe for two years – Wanderjahre. In USA he planned to stay 1 – 1 ½ years but he ended up spending 6 ½ years, of which he was a student (unregistered) for 2 ½ years and worked for the Norwegian government 4 years. Haavelmo is almost unique in choosing to return after the war ended.

Some glimpses from Frisch’s laboratory Frisch’s institute was a laboratory for mathematical-statistical experiments and empirical studies. The Institute had at the outset a grant from Rockefeller

• Foundation. Frisch hired a number of assistants, students and young graduates,

and acquired the computational equipment he could afford, stretching the means by offering low pay. Perhaps the laboratory was run with some similarities to the jeweller’s shop. Thus Haavelmo was thus hired to be a computor. Frisch must have discovered Haavelmo’s talent but he was not offered particularly favorable conditions. After two years Frisch redefined Haavelmo’s position to be chief computor and doubled his pay. The Institute’s research program in the first five years comprised:

• I. Time Series and Business Cycle Analysis+ Economic Dynamics+
• II. Productivity Studies

III. Demand and Utility Analysis

• IV. Statistical-Technical Studies for Developing Tools Necessary in the

The projects under I were Frisch’s most ambitious and certainly most time consuming project. It was about “economic dynamics”, in the institute jargon

• ften called “shock theory”, Haavelmo got very deeply involved.

The Confluence Analysis book of 1934 was the main outcome under IV. The confluence analysis attracted scholars to Frisch as a generator of new and fruitful ideas. Among the visitors were Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994) and Tjalling Koopmans (1919-1985), both from the Netherlands and future Nobel laureates, and both figure prominently in the history of econometrics. Another person who wanted to visit but never arrived was Jakob Marschak (1898-1977). Marschak had a position in Heidelberg in 1933 when he fled

• Germany. He preferred to come to Frisch’s Institute but ended in Oxford. From

1943 he was research director of Cowles Commission in Chicago.

Koopmans was in Oslo the autumn of 1935 and was primarily concerned with “the problems, arising from the circumstances that classical sampling theory does not regard cases in which observational series develop in time in such a way, that the probability distribution of the second term is not independent of the value attained by the first.” He gave a series of lectures, On Modern Sampling Theory. Koopmans worked on a dissertation to study whether Frisch’s views could be incorporated in a more formalized probabilistic framework. Koopmans’s lectures provided Haavelmo’s introduction to the recently developed Neyman–Pearson theory of testing and is likely to have ignited Haavelmo’s interest in learning more about probability theory and statistics. In addition to working within Frisch’s two main scientific paradigms, Haavelmo took part in a number of Frisch’s empirical studies falling under production and demand studies, number II and III in the list above.

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One production study was about chocolate with data from Freia (The principle

• f substitution. An example of its application in the chocolate industry). Oslo’s

biggest bakery commissioned a project to investigate the quality of its bread; the econometric analysis revealed that the dough needed more water! An interesting demand study was undertaken in 1934 for the breweries’ association, whose concern was that deflation under nominal taxation had caused a doubling of the real price of beer whereas the consumption was

• halved. The breweries wanted corroborated evidence to convince the

government that lower taxes would increase tax revenues. The task seemed simple, a question of determining the price elasticity. Direct regressions gave highly uncertain estimates around -1. Frisch used his connections with the statistical bureau and borrowed the entire data files for the most recent household surveys, from which Haavelmo estimated a short- and long-term price elasticity of -1.74 and -1.55, respectively. Frisch was still not satisfied; he produced a questionnaire and sent students out to interview acquaintances about their reactions to hypothetical changes in the price of beer. Analysis of the polled answers gave an aggregate estimate equal to -1.65, corroborating the earlier result. The two future Nobel laureates sat together at the end of June 1936, drafting the report to the breweries’ association.

The project considered many research ideas that didn’t make it into the final

• report. One was to use regional data, even for small communities. This

required demographic data, adapted for beer demand use. The concept of “beer capability” (“ølførhet”) was coined. The legal beer capability age was 18 years but the statistical beer capability age was set to 15 years. For setting weights for men and women old sources were quoted: ”Når ølet er godt, drikker kvinnen en pæl og mannen en pott”. Men aged 15-70 were given weight 1, women 1/3 og men above 70 1/2. The idea was inter alia to study sudden local changes in beer consumption in new industrial communities (Sauda, Odda) and railway construction (Nord- og Sørlandsbanen) caused by accumulation of “ølføre”. Soon after the beer project Frisch and Haavelmo took of to the sixth Europen Society European meeting in Oxford, September 1936. It must have been the first international meeting discussing Keynes’ General Theory. Also an important experience for Haavelmo. After the meeting Haavelmo remained three months in London, in Neyman’s Department. Another demand study resulting in the only published joint paper by Frisch and Haavelmo was a study of the demand for milk in 1938. In 1937 Frisch initiated a project on developing national accounts for Norway. Haavelmo took part until he left for Denmark. The Probability Approach In 1989 Haavelmo was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for ‘his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures’.

The two publications mentioned in the Nobel announcement were: 1943 The Statistical Implications of a System of Simultaneous Equations, Econometrica 1944 The Probability Approach in Econometrics, Econometrica (supplement) Haavelmo had studied much probability theory and statistics before he left for

• USA. His main purpose was to study how economic theory could be tested.

Some presentations of the history of econmetrics conveys an impression of a divide between Frisch and Haavelmo over the role of probability. Morgan’s book is fairly balanced in this regard. After two years in USA, that is already by August 1941, Haavelmo had completed the treatise that would become known as the Probability Approach. It was mimeographed at Harvard with the title On the Theory and Measurement of Economic Relations.

To help the reader keep track of Haavelmo’s movements during the first two years he spent in the United States, the period in which he wrote “The Proba- bility Approach,” Table 2 shows where he was, when, and with whom, though the text must be consulted for more precise information about the contacts+ After the Cowles Commission conference, Haavelmo left for Berkeley at the end of August 1939, arriving on the ominous day of the outbreak of World War II+ One may presume that his stay in Berkeley was of great importance for Table 2. Trygve Haavelmo’s itinerary, June 1939–August 1941

Location Time Contacts Colorado Springs June–August 1939 Abraham Wald, Jakob Marschak, Gerhard Tintner et al+ Berkeley September–November 1939 Jerzy Neyman Ames, Iowa November 1939 ~one week! G+ Tintner Chicago November–December 1939 Cowles Commission staff, Theodore Yntema, Oskar Lange, Dickson H+ Leavens, J+ Marschak Philadelphia December 1939 ~3 days! Econometric Society meeting New York January–May 1940 H+ Hotelling, A+ Wald, J+ Marschak Colorado Springs June–August 1940 A+ Wald, W+ Leontief, Paul A+ Samuelson et al+ Harvard August–December 1940 Joseph A+ Schumpeter, Alvin Hansen, Gottfried Haberler, Hans Staehle et al+ Chicago December 1940–February 1941 Cowles Commission and Econometric Society meetings Ann Arbor February 18–26, 1941 Arthur Smithies Harvard March–June 1941 Joseph A+ Schumpeter, Alvin Hansen, Gottfried Haberler, Leo Hurwicz, Hans Staehle et al+ Princeton May 22–23, 1941 Arthur Loveday, League of Nations Maine July–August 1941 A+ Wald Harvard August 1941 Joseph A+ Schumpeter, Alvin Hansen, Gottfried Haberler, Hans Staehle et al+ WRITING “THE PROBABILITY APPROACH” WITH NOWHERE TO GO 785

At this stage Haavelmo may have felt uncomfortable in USA. He had been longer in USA than originally intended. Some friends were imprisoned, others working for the resistance opr Norwegin authorities abroad. To return to Norway was politically impossible. Haavelmo decided to leave academia and accept whatever work he would be offered by Norwegian authorities. While he was working for Nortraship in New York he write the 1943 article and revised the 1941 treatise and accepted Marschak’s offer to have it published as an annex to Econometrica 1944. At the end of 1945 Haavelmo’s assignment for the Norwegian government came to an end. While waiting for a job offer in Norway he committed himself to work one year for the Cowles Commission in Chigaco where Jacob Marschak had gathered a kind of dream team to work on econometric problems, following up Haavelmo’s Probability Approach. Then what is Haavelmo’s econometrics? It is hardly an exaggeration to denote the Probability Approach as a landmark in the history of econometric modeling and more to the point that it founded econometrics as a separate discipline. Haavelmo viewed theoretical models as human constructs: “It is not to be forgotten that they are all our own artificial inventions in a search for an understanding of real life; they are not hiddent truths to be 'discovered'.” In Haavelmo's approach, the procedure from a theoretical model to the estimated equations is considerably more sophisticated than the modern text-book approach of attaching white-noise error terms to theoretical relationships. According to Haavelmo, a theoretical model gains empirical meaning only when accompanied with some form of "actual" or "designed" experiment stating the circumstances under which the theoretical relationships are measurable: “ ... when we set up a system of theoretical relationships and use economic names for the otherwise purely theoretical variables involved, we have in mind some actual experiment, or some design of an experiment, which we could at least imagine arranging, in order to measure those quantities in real economic life that we think might obey the laws imposed on their theoretical name-sakes… .” Haavelmo contrasted experimental data to the observed data in economics (passive observation). The conomist “is presented with some results which, so to speak, Nature has produced in all their complexity, his task being to build models that explain what has been observed . . . one should study very carefully the actual series considered and the conditions under which they were produced, before identifying them with the variables of a particular theoretical model.” These statements from the beginning of Haavelmo’s treatise indictes that his main concern is how to confront theory of data, a topic often dealt with very

superficially in textbooks. Haavelmo put forward a more sophisticated framework for bridging the gap between theory and data in economcis than anyone had done earlier. A major element in Haavelmo’s approach is that, for purposes of statistical inference (identification, estimation, and hypothesis testing), what matters is the joint distribution of all of the observable random variables for the whole of the sample period, by some authors called ‘the Haavelmo distribution’. Another important methodological element is the notion of statistical adequacy, first put forward by R.A. Fisher. A statistical model is said to be statis-tically adequate when its underlying assumptions are valid for the data

• chosen. otherwise, the statistical inference results associated with that model

are invalid in general. Haavelmo points out the importance of establishing statistical adequacy before using the associated statistical results, in the form

• f a rhetorical question: “... What is the use of testing, say, the significance of

regression coefficients, when maybe, the whole assumption of the linear regression equation is wrong?” A third element in Haavelmo’s approach was that of a general statistical model whose form is influenced by the structure of the data. The statistical model is chosen in view of both the theory and the structure of the data and is used to narrow down the set of a priori admissible theoretical models. Haavelmo’s 1943 article was the first to consider the statistical implications of simultaneity in economic models and was one of the main sources of inspiration for the extensive work carried out at the Cowles Commission. Haavelmo showed that the results of some methods used were misleading, as these methods did not sufficiently account for the fact that economic

• utcomes were determined by interaction of a multitude of economic relations

and that economic laws are not strictly rigorous. (The simultaneity problem had

• f courzse also been a major concern for Frisch.)

Other notable works by Haavelmo 1945 Multiplier Effects of a Balanced Budget, Econometrica 1954 A Study in the Theory of Economic Evolution, Amsterdam, North Holland 1958 The role of the econometrician in the advancement of economic theory, Econometrica 1960 A Study in the Theory of Investment, Chicago, University of Chicago Press 1966 Orientering i makroøkonomisk teori The 1945 article is often referred to as the Haavelmo Theorem (or Effect) and was written towards the end of his stay in USA. The expansionary effect in a Keynesian unemployment situation of a balanced increase of public

expenditure and taxes had been pointed out before, but Haavelmo was the first to provide a rigorous theoretical analysis of it. After his return to Norway, Haavelmo turned away from econometrics to economic theory as his main field of interest. He stated on some occasions, including his 1957 presidential address to the Econometric Society that there was a need for a more solid theoretical foundation for empirical work as well, as well as a need for theory to be inspired by empirical research. Haavelmo 1954 book is an a pioneering study of the possible reasons for economic underdevelopment of a country in relation to other countries, before many other economists became seriously engaged in development research. It is also an exploration of the methods to be used the contributions in development, including an emphasis on the role of stochastic shocks. It can also be read as an early contribution to growth theory, less elegany than Solow, but more penetrating. Some of the finding were rediscovered by others, e.g. rent-seeking (called ‘grabbing by Haavelmo). The 1960 book bridges Haavelmo Wicksellian background with neoclassical capital theory, explaining the sluggishness in the adjustment of real capital, with much influence on subsequent research.. Haavelmo probes deeply into capital theory, emphasizing stronglythat a theory of optimum capital use does not in itself provide a theory of investment. Haavelmo was very interested macroeconomic theory and applications. He lectured macroeconomics to generations of students and wrote during sabbatical in 1966 a long macroeconomic treatise (unfortunately in Norwegian

• nly). Haavelmo also made some contributions to environmental economics,

long before such research was commonplace, inspiring younger colleagues and

• ther researchers.

Haavelmo’s style and characteristics In some other respects he was not bothered by environmental principles. Haavelmo’s office was often shrouded in the tobacco smoke of an inveterate pipe smoker. Any passing hint about opening a window was met with a refusal

• n the grounds that it would let in the noise of traffic and pollution from the

road outside. Haavelmo had an extremely good macroeconomic judgement and understanding (unlike Frisch). He was a treasured macroeconomic adviser, who was called upond on many occsions, although few people knew about this role. On his appointment to chief computor in 1935 Haavelmo bought a Harley- Davidson motorbike, which saved him time going to work, and was admired by students when parked in the back yard of Fredriksgt. Haavelmo was fond throughout his life of the wilderness, as, indeed, was Frisch. But it was not really a common interest. Whereas Haavelmo’s ideal pastime was fishing and pipe smoking miles away from other human beings, Frisch’s outdoor activity was hiking and climbing mountains. Hours of solitude at a lake may have been when Haavelmo conceived his original ideas, whereas Frisch seemed to derive from hard physical exercise in mountain air his legendary ability to work on a problem for days on end. Cross-country skiing was, however, an activity they both enjoyed into high age. Haavelmo some times arrived at Blindern on ski from Østerås.

By all accounts, it was a prominent Haavelmoian trait that he never ceased to wonder and usually air arguments about things that puzzled him. Whether he actually wanted a response or just to express his thoughts was not always completely clear. He could enter the room of the institute’s research assistants to air thoughts he had had after reading something in the papers or hearing it

• n the television. His reasoning was always critical of what had been said.

Perhaps it was meant to encourage the assistants to think over the issue. Haavelmo was as such a scientist in everything he did and often used examples plucked from everyday life to ignite a certain line of thought. His insight covered many subjects. His curiosity could be seen in his manner of “wondering” how things actually ticked, things which frequently lay far outside the traditional province of economics. He could also knock on a colleague’s door, enter and set out the case for a certain argument, often interspersed by criticism. It happened that the colleague honoured by this display realised later that the criticism embedded in the argument was aimed at himself. This slightly eccentric aspect of Haavelmo’s character must have been in evidence already during his time as Frisch’s assistant, because Frisch once wrote that Haavelmo’s eccentricity sometimes got the better of him: It is not necessary to emulate a master of eccentricity, Haavelmo, who says things nobody understands, until three days or a month later, while they are sitting at home, they suddenly exclaim: “Well, I’m blowed.” Being moderately eccentric suffices. [En behøver jo ikke gå så langt som mesteren i underfundighet, Haavelmo, når han sier noe som ingen skjønner før tre dager etter eller en måned etter, når de sitter hjemme hos seg selv og sier: ”Ja så sannelig.” Det kan være nok å være bare så passelig underfundig].

Leif Johansen 1930-82 Graduated 1954. Doctoral degree 1961. Worked as assistant to Frisch since 1951, universitetsstipendiat 1954, Associate Professor 1959, Professor (macroeconomic planning) 1965. Visited Cambridge (Stone) 1958/59. 1958 The role of the banking system in a macro-economic model. International Economic Papers 8, 91–110. 1959 Substitution versus fixed production coefficients in the theory of economic growth. Econometrica 27, 157–76. 1960 A Multi-Sectoral Study of Economic Growth, North-Holland, Amsterdam 1963 Labour theory of value and marginal utilities. Economics of Planning 2, 89–103. 1965 Public Economics, North-Holland, Amsterdam 1969 An examination of the relevance of Kenneth Arrow's General Possibility Theorem for economic planning. Economics of Planning 9, 5–41. 1972 Production Functions: An Integration of Micro and Macro, Short Run and Long Run Aspects, North-Holland, Amsterdam 1972 On the optimal use of forecasts in economic policy decisions. Journal of Public Economics 1, 1–24. 1977 Lectures on Macroeconomic Planning. Vol. 1: General Aspects. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 1978 Lectures on Macroeconomic Planning. Vol. 2: Centralization, Decentralization, Planning under Uncertainty. Amsterdam: North-Holland

• 1979. The bargaining society and the inefficiency of bargaining. Kyklos 32,
• 1982. On the status of the Nash type of noncooperative equilibrium in

economic theory. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 84 Johansen's 1960 book, his doctoral dissertation, is prototype of the class of models know as Computable General Equilibrium model (CGE or AGE models).

Johansen’s model built a bridge between the theory of economic growth, which had become fashionable in the 1950s, and Leontief's input–output model, which at the time was widely used in economic planning and

• forecasting. In the dissertation Johansen presented a theoretical model, and

applied it to Norwegian data. He analysed a 23-sector model of the economy, and it seems that at first this empirical part of the work was considered the more important. A number of practitioners in this field seem convinced that this pioneering work would eventually have brought Johansen a Nobel Prize. After a few years, the model, often referred to as the MSG-model, became the basis for long-term planning by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, and over the years it was developed and extended. Johansen pioneering work came to exert a great international influence. Johansen continued and extended the pioneering work of Frisch on production functions in a series of articles and in the 1972 book. Johansen was a member of the Communist Party of Norway, however, his political views hardly left a trace in his professional writings. An uniformed reader will be at loss to divine which political opinions – if any – the author

• holds. Johansen wrote some but few papers on planning in eastern Europe and
• n Marxist economic theory, one of them is his 1963 ‘Labour Theory of Value’

paper. Johansen served on a number of expert committees appointed by different Norwegian governments, and was accepted as the objective scientist who would point out logical inconsistencies but never let his personal views influence the recommendations he made. There is, however, little doubt that Johansen's political opinions had a marked effect on his career. Under the rules in force in the 1950s and 1960s it was impossible for him to obtain a visa to the USA. He therefore did not have the

• pportunity of spending some of his formative years at an American university.

Johansen was appointed as professor with a duty tolecturre on macroeconomci planning, which was a major interest of Frisch and also of Johansen. Johansen’s two-volume Lectures on Macroeconomic Planning (1977, 1978) is a landmark. It is essentially a textbook which gives a balanced overview of the major issues in the economics of planning, integrating the results Johansen reached over 25 years with those of the many others who contributed to the development of the subject. As often Johansen appears as a master in reconciling different views and approaches. A third volume was in preparation at the time of Johansen's death.

When Johansen began to lecture on public economics in 1960, there was no single book which covered this heterogeneous subject. He published a textbook in Norwegian in 1962 and a revised and extended in English in 1965. The book helped to establish ‘public economics’ as a recognized part of economics. Johansen had a strong interest in game theory and a firm belief in its applicability to many problems in economics. The assumptions leading to neoclassical equilibrium are generally considered to be unrealistic, and game theory, with its different solution concepts based on compromises between coalitions, were developed as a generalization of the standard market model. The same idea can be applied to a central planning model. Plans are rarely drawn up and executed by a consistent single-minded dictator. Usually they appear as a compromise between different interest groups (coalitions) in society, or within a bureaucracy. Game theory is closely related to bargaining theory, and Johansen's 1979 paper

• n bargaining is notable. Also his 1982 paper on Nash equilibrium should be
• noted. Increasingly Johansen came to look at game theory as a general theory
• f economic behaviour, which contains as special cases the two extremes:

completely centralized decision making and perfect competition. Other Nobel class economists in Oslo?? Four Bergen economists

Karl Borch (1919-1986)

Borch graduated in actuarial science UiO 1947 (interrupted by war service 1941-45). He then pursued a non-academic career, working for various UN agencies 1947-55 (interrupted by half a year at Cowles Commission in Chicago in 1953). Worked for OECD 1955-59. Was offered a doctoral scholarship 1959, passed doctoral degree 1962 and became Professor of insurance at NHH from 1963. Borch was then 40 years of age, his academic credentials were limited, and even being an actuary with some – although rather limited – experience, he had not written anything within the field. But Borch fearlessly accepted the new challenge and is considered one of the founders of economics of uncertainty. 1953 Effects on Demand of Changes in the Distribution of Income, Econometrica, 325-331 1962 Equilibrium in a reinsurance market, Econometrica, 424-444 1967 The Theory of Risk, The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 1968 The Economics of Uncertainty, Princeton University Press 1969 A note on Uncertainty and Indifference Curves, Rev. of Economic Studies, 1974 The Mathematical Theory of Insurance, Lexington, MA. Borch had thoroughly studied the reformulation of general equilibrium theory by Arrow and Debreu as well as von Neumann and Morgenstern’s expected utility representation of preferences and understood perfectly the significance as well as the limitations og these works at a time when few economists had taken notice. An important contribution in early papers by Borch was to derive testable implications from the abstract model of general equilibrium with markets for contingent claims. In this way, he brought economic theory to bear

• n insurance problems, thereby opening up that field considerably; and he

brought the experience of reinsurance contracts to bear on the interpretation

• f economic theory, thereby enlivening considerably the interest for that

theory. Borch did not write only about insurance, but it is fair to say that after he started his academic career, practically his entire production was centered on the topic of uncertainty in economics. The essential ideas are in his 1968 book. Borch often related advanced theoretical results to casual observations - sometimes in a genuinely entertaining manner, which conveyed a glimpse of his wit and personal charm.

Borch helped establish, and travelled repeatedly, the bridge that links the theory of reinsurance markets and the “Capital Asset Pricing Model” (CAPM), developed by his former student Jan Mossin, among others. Borch’s view of the economics of uncertainty can be related to to the theory of “contingent claims” in financial economics, the interest of which almost exploded, following the paper by Black and Scholes in (1973). Many of the concepts are more transparent in Borch’s presentation than in the “modern” counterpart. Borch became a very important person at NHH, particularly for the generation

• f researchers who started out as research assistants in this period. Borch had

enormous influence as teacher, advisor, and as a role model. He gave the first lectures at graduate level, and supervised many doctoral candidates. Jan Mossin (1936-1987) Graduated NHH 1959. PhD Carnegie Institute of Technology. Professor NHH from 1968. 1966 Equilibrium in a Capital Asset Market, Econometrica, 1968 Optimal Multiperiod Portfolio Policies", Journal of Business 1973 Theory of Financial Markets, Prentice-Hall 1977 The Economic Efficiency of Financial Markets, Lexington Books The 1966 paper (part of the doctoral dissertation was a very important contribution to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). In 1990 the Nobel Prize in Economics was shared between Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller and William Sharpe for “their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics". It is not reasonable to assert that Mossin’s work was comparable with that of those who shared the prize.

Agnar Sandmo (1938- ) Graduate NHH 1961. Dr.oecon. NHH 1970. Professor NHH 1971-2007.

1969 Capital risk, consumption and portfolio choice, Econometrica 1971 On the theory of the competitive firm under price uncertainty, American Economic Review 1972 Discount rates for public investment under uncertainty, I nternational Economic Review 1977 Portfolio theory, asset demand and taxation: Comparative statics with many assets", Review of Economic Studies 1985 The effects of taxation on saving and risk-taking, in A.J. Auerbach & M.S. Feldstein (eds.), Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. I 2000 The Public Economics of the Environment, Oxford University Press 2005 The theory of tax evasion: A retrospective view,” National Tax Journal

Sandmo has done highly recognized work on economic decisions under

• uncertainty. He has also important work in tax analysis and other aspects of

public economics, and analysis of welfare policy. The 2000 book has been influential in environmental policy studies.

Victor Norman (1946- ) Graduated Yale University, PhD M.I.T. 1972. Professor from 1975.

1980 Theory of international trade, Cambridge University Press (with Avinash Dixit 1986 Gains from trade without lump-sum compensaton, Journal of International Economics (with Avinash Dixit) 1990 Assessing trade and welfare effects of trade liberalization, European Economic Review 1995 International Trade, Factor Mobility, and Trade Costs, Economic Journal (with A.J. Venables.)

Norman has done highly recognized work in international trade (with Dixit) based on microeconomic analysis. His brilliance in applied research and policy analysis has set a very high standard.

Odd Langholm (1928- ) Graduated NHH 1954. Dr.econ. 1964. Professor 1966-1998. Langholm reoriented his interests from business economics to medieval economic thought from 1969 and gained great international renown in his new field. 1979 Price and Value in the Aristotelian Tradition. A Study in Scholastic Economic Sources, Universitetsforlaget 1982 Economic freedon in scholastic thought, Histort of Political Economy 1983 Wealth and Money in the Aristotelian Tradition, Universitetsforlaget 1984 The Aristotelian Analyses of Usury, Universitetsforlaget 1992 Economics in the Medieval Schools. Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200–1350 1998 The Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought. Antecedents of Choice and Power, Cambridge University Press.