Mandelbrot (1961) proposed to apply the class of Pareto-Levy distributions - which belong to the Stable distributions - as a framework for modelling income distributions. He also presented theoretic arguments in favor of the Pareto-Levy distributions. In this paper we provide additional...

We presents evidence that non-financial customers are the main liquidity providers in the overnight foreign exchange market using a unique daily data set covering almost all transactions in the SEK/EUR market over almost ten years. Two main findings support this: (i) The net position of...

The household portfolio is dominated by a small number of assets; primarily housing and mortgages. We compare data on actual portfolios of Norwegian households with estimated optimal portfolios, using traditional financial theory. We find actual portfolios to be close to the portfolio indicated...

We use a dynamic factor model and a detailed panel data set with quarterly accounts data on all Norwegian banks to study the effects of banks' funding costs on their retail rates. Banks' funds are categorized into two groups: customer deposits and long-term wholesale funding (market funding from...

In this paper, we examine two questions: i) how changes in the funding costs of banks affect retail loan rates and ii) how changes in relative loan rates between banks affect their market shares. To do so, we estimate a simultaneous system of equations model using panel data for six Norwegian...

The hypothesis of market power in the Norwegian primary aluminium industry is tested using plant-level panel data. Economies of scale are found to be present, and Norwegian aluminium plants charge a procyclical price-cost margin that significantly exceeds zero. Consequently, the simple...

A framework for analyzing substitution and scale properties, and technical change from plant-level panel data is presented. Focus is on comparing the constant and random coefficient specification of the substitution and scale parameters and investigating the potential variation of the parameters...

This paper analyses how changes in market structure have affected the margins (measured by the Lerner index) of Norwegian aluminium plants. Instead of showing the expected negative trend, due to increased competition internationally, the margins are found to move procyclically around a constant...

We evaluate consequences of some important assumptions ofthe perpetual inventory method of capital stock calculation under geometric depreciation. The data are plant-level panel data from the Norwegian manufacturing statistics, containing independent measures of capital stocks and gross...