Fredrik Carlsen

Asset Specificity and the Political Behavior of Firms: Lobbying for Subsidies in Norway

Previous research into endogenous trade policy has described extensively the political incentives of firms with specific assets, but no studies have shown directly that firms behave as predicted. We adopt insights from transaction costs economics to develop measures of asset specificity and to investigate how variation in these measures affects the political behavior of firms. In particular, we examine the lobbying choices of Norwegian firms in the 1980s. Given available subsidy funds from Norways oil boom and some government decisions in the 1970s, firms with more specific assets faced potentially greater losses from adjusting to new activities in the face of competitive pressures and thus had greater incentives to lobby for subsidies to protect themselves. Joint contacting of Parliament and government on behalf of firm interests by representatives of both management and labor should be particularly likely where firms had specific assets. Data analysis shows that asset specificity, as indicated by R&D intensity and job immobility, predicts joint contacting independently of plausible alternative explanatory variables like firm size and export orientation.

MORE PHYSICIANS: IMPROVED AVAILABILITY OR INDUCED DEMAND?

A number of empirical studies have shown that there is a negative association between population:physician ratio and utilization of medical services. However, it is not clear whether this relationship reflects supplier-inducement, the effect of lower prices on patient demand, a supply response to variation in health status, or improved availability. In Norway, patient fees and state reimbursement fees are set centrally. Therefore, the correlation between utilization and population:physician ratio either reflects supplier-inducement, a supply response or an availability effect. We applied a theoretical model which distinguished between an inducement and an availability effect. The model was implemented on a cross-sectional data set which contained information about patient visits and laboratory tests for all fee-for-service primary care physicians in Norway. Since population:physician ratio is potentially endogenous, an instrumental variable approach is used. We found no evidence for inducement either for number of visits or for provision of laboratory services.

Unemployment, inflation and government popularity — are there partisan effects?

Abstract The paper employs quarterly vote intention or approval rate series for the US, Canada, the UK and Australia to examine whether the sensitivity of government popularity to unemployment and inflation depends on the governments ideology. In all four countries, right governments are hurt by unemployment but not by moderate inflation. The results for left governments are less conclusive.

Consumer satisfaction and supplier induced demand

This study examines the relationship between supply of primary physicians and consumer satisfaction with access to, and quality of, primary physician services in Norway. The purpose is to throw light on a long-standing controversy in the literature on supplier inducement (SID): the interpretation of the positive association between physician density and per capita utilization of health services. We find that an increase in the number of physicians leads to improved consumer satisfaction, and that the relationship between satisfaction and physician density exhibits diminishing returns to scale. Our results suggest that policy-makers can compute the socially optimal density of physicians without knowledge about whether SID exists, if one accepts the (controversial) assumption that consumer satisfaction is a valid proxy for patient utility.

Counterfiscal policies and partisan politics: evidence from industrialized countries

According to partisan theories of macroeconomic policy, left-wing parties are more concerned with unemployment while right-wing parties tend to weigh the costs of inflation higher. An implication of partisan theories is that partisan policy differences should depend on the state of the economy, with left-wing governments conducting relatively more expansive policies during recessions. We test whether left-wing governments are more favourably inclined towards countercyclical fiscal policies than their right-wing counterparts using a panel data set of 18 OECD countries from 1980 to 1992. The results are supportive of partisan theories. The structural deficit is significantly higher under left-wing governments when unemployment is high or rising while the ideology of the government party (parties) has no significant impact on the structural deficit when unemployment is low or falling.

WAITING TIMES AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS. EVIDENCE FROM NORWAY

We investigate whether socioeconomic status, measured by income and education, affects waiting time when controls for severity and hospital-specific conditions are included. We also examine which aspects of the hospital supply (attachment to local hospital, traveling time, or choice of hospital) matter most for unequal treatment of different socioeconomic groups. The study uses administrative data from all elective inpatient and outpatient stays in somatic hospitals in Norway. The main results are that we find very little indication of discrimination with regard to income and education when both severity and aspects of hospital supply are controlled for. This result holds for both men and women.

Services production and patient satisfaction in primary care

CONTEXT The institutional setting for the study was the primary physician service in Norway, where there is a regular general practitioner scheme. Each inhabitant has a statutory right to be registered with a regular general practitioner. There are large differences between physicians in service production. OBJECTIVE We studied whether difference in services production between physicians has an effect on how satisfied patients are with the services that are provided. METHODOLOGY Data about patient satisfaction were obtained from a survey of a representative sample of the population. We obtained data about how satisfied the respondents were with: waiting time to get an appointment, amount of time the physician spent with them, and to what extent they perceived that the physician took their medical problems seriously. The survey data were merged with data on service production for the primary physician that the respondent was registered with. Service production was measured as the number of consultations per person on the list. RESULTS There was a positive and relatively strong association between the level of service production of the general practitioners and patient satisfaction with waiting time for a consultation. There was no association between the level of service production and the two other measures of patient satisfaction. CONCLUSION The results provide evidence about one of several factors that should be taken into account when deciding on future health manpower policies with respect to primary physician services in Norway.

Opinion polls and political business cycles: Theory and evidence for the United States

The paper shows that the “Frey–Schneider–Schultz hypothesis” – that there is a negative relation between the governments popularity and the governments incentives to engineer political business cycles – is consistent with rational, forward-looking voting provided one makes appropriate assumptions about the incumbents preferences. The empirical part of the paper presents evidence favourable to the hypothesis using quarterly data on US money growth.

Wage Formation, Regional Migration and Local Labour Market Tightness

Economic theory predicts that local labour market tightness affects local wage setting as well as individuals’ migration decisions. But how should we measure local labour market tightness? In this paper we show that the common practice of using the local rate of unemployment as the tightness indicator may be misplaced. Instead, we propose a human capital adjusted outflow rate from unemployment that can be computed on the basis of micro register data. This outflow rate performs better than traditional measures of regional labour market conditions in panel data analyses of regional wages and interregional migration.

Why Is Central Regulation of Local Spending Decisions So Pervasive? Evidence From a Case Study

While the “classical” theory of fiscal federalism argues that local authorities should have substantial discretion to set the local budgetary mix, surveys show that central regulation of local spending decisions is pervasive. Norway provides an ideal setting for studying spending regulations. An attempt to decentralize fiscal choice to the local levels, the block grant reform, has been reversed in recent years. This article presents a case study of the interaction between a county and the national government from 1986, when the reform was implemented, to 1992. The study concludes that the government introduced new regulations to prevent local authorities from distorting spending decisions in order to elicit higher grants.