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This article examines digital stories about migration journeys produced by students in a mainstream upper secondary class in Norway. The digital stories were introduced as part of a social studies module designed to foster critical thinking around migration. The class was made up of ethnic Norwegian students, students with a family migration background, and recently arrived migrant students. Using multimodal analysis, we examined the storylines in the students' digital stories, focusing on the understandings of migration and nation produced. Inspired by Bamberg's (2004) conceptualisation of dominant and counter narratives, we explored the extent to which these understandings interpellated/resisted dominant narratives of migration and nation. We asked: What understandings of the migrant and of Norway do the storylines re/produce? To what extent do these understandings draw on dominant Norwegian narratives of migration? Our findings suggest that most of the digital stories draw on dominant narratives, especially that of Norway as an idealised model state. In conclusion, we discuss possible reasons for the narrative standardisation and suggest potential ways of opening up educational spaces for more counter narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining perspectives from institutional activism and signaling theory literatures, we suggest that an activist sovereign wealth fund (SWF) can serve as an intermediary signaler, providing cues about host countries’ institutional environment to internationalizing firms. By publicizing its investments and engaging in institutional activism, a SWF can signal the institutional quality of host countries to internationalizing firms, thus allowing them to overcome the well-known “lemons problem” in international decision-making. We examine the impact of a SWF’s signals on firms’ ownership choices in their foreign acquisitions. Our empirical analysis of Norway’s socially responsible SWF and firms from Norway and Sweden during 1998–2011 shows that firms are more likely to take larger commitments via full equity ownership in acquisitions in host countries where Norway’s SWF holds larger investments. The signaling effect of the SWF weakens for conational firms, suggesting that proximity to the signaler may generate alternative information channels that diminish the signaling value of foreign investments. Similarly, institutional harmonization enabled by intergovernmental organizations connecting the home and host countries weakens the signaling value of SWF investments. Our findings point to intermediary signaling by activist institutional investors and the salience of their signals for firms’ international decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the mid‐twentieth century a number of central banks around the western world lost their operational autonomy and were placed under government control. The origin of these policy changes can be traced to the intellectual and political developments of the interwar era in addition to the introduction of the Bretton Woods monetary system. The Norwegian central bank offers a particularly stark example of this phenomenon: experiencing a rapid decline from its high level of autonomy in the interwar years, to a clear subordination to the government after 1945. Through an analysis of the correspondence between the main policy makers in the exiled Norwegian government and central bank management, this article contributes to the understanding of central bank autonomy by tracing the decisive factors that led to the Norwegian central bank's loss of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prediction of New Home Economics of a negative effect of female wages on fertility has been tested in a number of studies, but the results are far from unanimous. This article contributes with new evidence based on registry data covering all Norwegian women born in 1955-1974 and a simultaneous hazard model of transitions to first, second and third birth. We find a U-shaped relationship between wages and the log hazard for all cohorts, however, varying in strength and across parity. In transitions to first birth, most women are likely to be on the downward slope of the curve, implying that the wage effect is mainly negative. In transitions to second and third birth, most women are likely to be on the upward slope of the curve, where the wage effect is positive. The results are not very sensitive to the omission of education and income of the spouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the Norwegian economy, 2003-2013 was a period of large growth and big business cycle fluctuations. The aggregate uv-curve reflects this and shows a reduction in both the vacancy rate and the unemployment rate from 2003 to 2013, suggesting improved labour market matching over the period. The inclusion of Eastern European countries in the European Union in 2004 and 2007 caused an increasing influx of foreign job seekers. I quantify regional and occupational mismatch, and make a distinction between natives and immigrants. Indicators show no reduction in mismatch over time, which therefore cannot account for the increased labour market efficiency that the uv-curve suggests. However, ‘footloose’ immigrants seem to have adapted better than ‘rooted’ natives to the structure of labour demand in the regional dimension, and thus to have contributed to a lower level of mismatch than would have resulted without immigrants. In the occupational dimension immigrants made no significant difference. Levels and differences in employment and unemployment among and between immigrants and natives were not well explained by their education levels or types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, or more commonly the Norwegian Petroleum Fund, established in 1990, is the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. The fund is commonly regarded as a successful product of economic foresight in a country with strong traditions of long-term planning. As the fund was established in a period during which leading social scientists strongly doubted the ability of Norwegian political and administrative institutions to handle the large oil riches, the article examines the background of the fund in detail. Government archives reveal that senior advisors in the central administration opposed and delayed the establishment of a petroleum fund. The argument in the article is that the advisors’ previous experience with fund structures, combined with the institutional logic in which the most important advisors were situated, explains both the long-lasting opposition against the fund and how and why the fund acquired its main characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes nominal price development in Norway from 1830 to 1920 and fills a gap in the literature on nominal price rigidity in Europe during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The research question: how did the nominal price rigidity change in Norway during this time period? The focus on Norway is justified because of the availability of historical data and gaps in literature concerning the nominal rigidities. The analysis of some of the digitized data for Oslo, Bergen and Stavanger during the period of 1830-1913 indicate that: a) The flexibility of prices did not change much during the classical Gold Standard in Norway; b) The change in price rigidity mainly came because of the changing magnitude of price changes; c) The decrease in magnitude might have happened before the Gold Standard took effect in Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international business press has been a powerful and influential voice in modern societies and, as its formative years took place during the Cold War, a closer look at the ideologies that were promoted in this part of the press is of interest. Until the 1970s, Farmand was the only Norwegian business magazine of any size and standing. Trygve J. B. Hoff, Farmand's editor from 1935, was part of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS), a neoliberal intellectual collective established in 1947 with participants such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. This article is a study of the ideas that Hoff promoted, particularly in Farmand, from the 1940s to the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the limited resources of fossil fuels and the need to mitigate climate change, energy utilisation for all human activity has to be improved. The objective of this study was to analyse the correlation between energy intensity on dairy farms and production mode, to examine the influence of machinery and buildings on energy intensity, and to find production related solutions for conventional and organic dairy farms to reduce energy intensity. Data from ten conventional and ten organic commercial dairy farms in Norway from 2010 to 2012 were used to calculate the amount of embodied energy as the sum of primary energy used for production of inputs from cradle-to-farm gates using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Energy intensities of dairy farms were used to show the amount of embodied energy needed to produce the inputs per metabolizable energy in the output. Energy intensities allow to easily point out the contribution of different inputs. The results showed that organic farms produced milk and meat with lower energy intensities on average than the conventional ones. On conventional farms, the energy intensity on all inputs was 2.6 ± 0.4 (MJ MJ −1 ) and on organic farms it was significantly lower at 2.1 ± 0.3 (MJ MJ −1 ). On conventional farms, machinery and buildings contributed 18% ± 4%, on organic farms 29% ± 4% to the overall energy use. The high relative contribution of machinery and buildings to the overall energy consumption underlines the importance of considering them when developing solutions to reduce energy consumption in dairy production. For conventional and organic dairy farms, different strategies are recommend to reduce the energy intensity on all inputs. Conventional farms can reduce energy intensity by reducing the tractor weight and on most of them, it should be possible to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilisers without reducing yields. On organic dairy farms, energy intensity can be reduced by reducing embodied energy in barns and increasing yields. The embodied energy in existing barns can be reduced by a higher milk production per cow and by a longer use of the barns than the estimated lifetime. In the long run, new barns should be built with a lower amount of embodied energy. The high variation of energy intensity on all inputs from 1.6 to 3.3 (MJ MJ −1 ) (corresponding to the energy use of 4.5–9.3 MJ kg −1 milk) found on the 20 farms shows a potential for producing milk and meat with lower energy intensity on many farms. Based on the results, separate recommendations were provided for conventional and organic farms for reducing energy intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistics Norway is modernising the production processes. An important element in this work is a library of functions for statistical computations. In principle, the functions in such a methods library can be programmed in several languages. A modernised production environment demand that these functions can be reused for different statistics products, and that they are embedded within a common IT system. The embedding should be done in such a way that the users of the methods do not need to know the underlying programming language. As a proof of concept, Statistics Norway soon has established a methods library offering a limited number of methods for macro-editing, imputation and confidentiality. This is done within an area of municipal statistics with R as the only programming language. This paper presents the details and experiences from this work. The problem of fi tting real word applications to simple and strict standards is discussed and exemplified by the development of solutions to regression imputation and table suppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The growing numbers of seniors worldwide and the need for support and services that follow from a higher standard of living have led to an increased focus on scarce benefits and limited human resources. At the same time, many western countries have had to make welfare cuts to balance budgets. This has brought the contributions of informal carers to the fore. Thus far, the focus has generally been on the need for the informal carers to receive information and support; to enable them to contribute.Methods: The study is designed as an institutional ethnography. The article describes the social processes of informal caregiving and how it interacts with formal caregiving, from the perspective of informal carers. The research question for the study is How do institutional discourses on the work of informal carers influence informal carework? Data for the article comes from qualitative semi-structured interviews with 26 informal carers caring for persons with dementia in Norway, and with 7 administrators working in the allocation divisions of five different municipalities.Results: The results demonstrate how three institutional discourses of informal carers' work influence the allocation divisions' practices and the work of informal carers in caring for their next of kin. The three discourses are categorised as moral and family obligation, shared care and task specificity. The informal carers want to contribute, as they feel a family and moral obligation to their next of kin. In the interaction with the allocation division, they find that the expectation that they will share in the carework and perform specific tasks forces them to perform care within a framework set by the public services.Conclusions: The findings suggest that further research should challenge how services are distributed and allocated rather than focus on how to enable informal carers to fulfil their role better. Because of their moral and family obligation, the informal carers do not have to be forced to perform certain tasks or parts of the shared care. To maintain the informal carers' carework and to fully utilise their contributions, public services would benefit from collaborating with the informal carers to fulfil the total care need of the person with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with gender and industrial developments in the northernmost part of Norway, where there are growing opportunities within the mining, oil and gas industries. Large companies move into the region for shorter or longer periods of time, leading to restructuring and change in these rural areas. These industries are typically male-dominated, and many of the workers coming to the region as part of such developments are men. The purpose of the study is to examine local public discourses on industry development in Northern Norway during a time of industrial restructuring. Using approaches from media studies and discourse analysis, I examine local public discourses to see to what extent they are 'gender conscious' in that they present concerns regarding gendered consequences of industrial restructuring processes, and also to see who speaks--in terms of gender--on the issues brought forth. I find that gendered issues linked to industrial restructurings in Northern Norway are not addressed in the public discourses and also that men, to a higher degree than women, speak on issues of industry development. Overall, gender does not seem to be a relevant topic, and with this, issues of gender are symbolically defined as irrelevant to understandings of industry development. I claim the invisibility of gender issues and the imbalance of men's and women's voices (re)produces a lack of awareness of gender in industry development and is part of creating an understanding of Northern Norway as a place where men are a better fit for industry developments than women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests the validity of the conditional Markov assumption in a dynamic discrete-choice model of welfare benefit receipt dynamics, using Norwegian administrative data. Exploiting its implied time aggregation properties, we find that the model is seriously mis-specified. Estimated state dependence varies strongly with the time unit of analysis, with the average treatment effect of past benefit receipt increasing with the level of aggregation. When permitting richer types of benefit dynamics, we find evidence for duration and occurrence dependence in benefit receipt and disparities in the effects of observed and persistent unobserved characteristics on the benefit entry and persistence processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption that events can have positive economic impacts has increased interest in their hosting by many destinations worldwide. Although attendees are a constitutive part of events, scarce research has empirically analyzed their behavior from an economic standpoint. In particular, further exploratory research is required on (1) how much money event attendees spend at events, and (2) the extent to which event attendee expenditures positively affect the host region. A better understanding of these two aspects is crucial for any kind of economic impact assessment. This study examines three World Cup ski-jumping events in Norway during the winter of 2012-2013. Altogether, 870 spectators were interviewed at the venues in Vikersund, Trondheim, and Oslo. Prior research has estimated that the proportion of spectators contributing to a positive economic impact is between 10% and 60%. The current study shows that the share of this spectator group at the World Cup ski-jumping events in Norway lies in the lower part of the range. Furthermore, the study shows that though the total number of spectators was significant (137,000), the primary economic impact on the host region was modest, amounting to less than NOK 9 million. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares migrants' rights and labour-migration policies of three resourcerich receiving countries located in the Persian Gulf, North America and Europe, respectively. The wealthy economies of Canada, Norway and the United Arab Emirates have emerged as some of the largest receivers of labour migrants. The comparative analysis herein focuses on distinctive characteristics of the different migration regimes and policies which regulate the rights of labour migrants. It is maintained that the countries we have explored could hardly be more different, and that the actual similarities with regard to migration policies are limited. Yet, we have still identified some surprising and unexpected converging trends. Specifically, these countries use some similar tools and exclusionary policies in order to restrict the legal status of certain categories of labour migrants, particularly low-skilled migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the financial crisis that hit Iceland in October 2008, increased numbers of Icelanders migrated to Norway to seek employment due to difficult economic circumstances in Iceland. Using critical perspectives from postcolonial studies and critical whiteness studies, the paper explores how these Icelandic migrants in Norway make sense of their new position as economic migrants within a global economy characterised by a growing sense of precariousness, while past inequalities and racism continue to matter. We also examine how these migrants are perceived in Norwegian media, and how social discourses of Icelandic migrants reflect larger Norwegian debates on racism, desirability and cultural belonging. Media discourses in Norway and interviews with Icelandic migrants reveal a hierarchy of acceptability of migrants. Icelanders are positioned as highly desirable compared to other migrant groups due to the intersection of perceived racial belonging, nationality and class. Our discussion contributes, furthermore, towards a critical analysis of the category migrant, by exploring how the term immigrant (innvandrer/innflytjandi) is used in narratives of Icelandic migrants in Norway and in Norwegian media discussions, showing the negative and racialised connotations of the term immigrant and how its understanding is linked with vulnerable positions and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been argued that 'there is something in the air' which makes firms in high-density environments-such as cities or clusters-more innovative. The co-location of firms facilitates the emergence of serendipity and casual encounters which promote innovation in firms. We assess this hypothesis using data from a survey of Norwegian firms engaged in innovation partnerships. The results indicate that there may be 'much less in the air' than is generally assumed in the literature. The relationships conducive to innovation by Norwegian firms emerged as a consequence of purpose-built searches and had little to do with chance, serendipity, or 'being there.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]