Research

I am an applied economist working mostly with reduced form methods in the fields of labor, public, education and family economics.

Published and forthcoming work

You Cannot Force Me Into Caregiving: Paternity Leave and the Child Penalty  [Working paper version]

High school dropout for marginal students: Early career consequences and labor market outcomes [working paper version]
joint with Sturla Løkken, forthcoming at Journal of Labor Economics. Statistics Norway Discussion Paper No. 894 

What Causes the Child Penalty? Evidence from Same Sex  and Adopting Couples [working paper version]

Instrument-based estimation with binarized treatments: Issues and tests for the exclusion restriction

Hva koster det å stenge utdanningssektoren?  Beregning av kostnader av smittevernstiltak mot COVID-19 for humankapital, studieprogresjon og produktivitet 

Child care, parental labor supply and tax revenue

Exploring Marginal Treatment Effects: Flexible estimation using Stata

The impact of universal prekindergarten on family behavior and child outcomes

Working papers

The importance of escape clauses: Firm response to thin capitalization rules, {new draft!]

Abstract: To curb international profit shifting, many countries have introduced thin capitalization rules (TCRs) that limit interest deductibility. These rules often include escape clauses to exempt smaller firms, but such thresholds create incentives for strategic tax avoidance by reallocating debt within corporate groups. This paper evaluates the impact of Norway’s 2014 TCR reform, which features escape clauses, using difference-in-differences, bunching, and regression discontinuity designs. We find that exposed firms sharply reduce leverage following the reform, but with no detectable effects on firm performance. At the corporate group level, leverage remains unchanged, indicating that firm-level responses primarily reflect intra-group debt reallocation to minimize exposure. A key part of this avoidance exploits escape clauses: we document substantial bunching just below the rule’s inclusion thresholds, especially among newly created subsidiaries. Internal debt is disproportionately shifted to these bunchers, allowing the rest of the group to avoid increased tax liability. These strategic responses suggest that naive, pre-reform estimates substantially overestimate tax revenue — firms eliminate most of their initial exposure through intra-group coordination, and reduced deductions largely reappear elsewhere in the corporate group. Our findings underscore the fiscal costs of escape clauses when these apply at the firm level and suggest that threshold-based regulations must carefully weigh administrative simplicity against avoidance incentives.

Child care for all? Treatment effects on test scores under essential heterogeneity

Abstract: The common claim that universal child care equalizes differences in endowments rests crucially on heterogeneity in the treatment effect. In this paper, I investigate how test scores in reading, math and English at age 10 are affected by early child care attendance using marginal treatment effects. Identification comes from a large Norwegian reform that expanded highly rationed child care for toddlers unequally across municipalities and over time. I find that a) IV returns are small and even negative, but hide important heterogeneity, b) there is some evidence of positive selection on observable gains and c) MTEs are downward sloping, suggesting selection on unobservable gains: Children with large unobserved treatment effects are most likely to be treated. This implies that the effect of further expansions is smaller than initial rollout as the children with the largest treatment effects are already served.

Work in progress

• Testing the Monotonicity Assumption in Instrumental Variable Models, with Tymon Słoczyński and Martin Huber

• Instruments for Sequential Treatments, with Tymon Słoczyński, Martin Huber and Alfred Løvgren

• Bunching and the labor supply elasticity: A methodological meta-analysis, with Lars Thorvaldsen

• A better polynomial bunching estimator

• Monthly Earnings Volatility and Household Pooling, with Andreas Kostøl, Ross Milton, Corina Mommaerts and Luisa Wallossek

• Pay Beliefs and the Amenity-Pay Tradeoff, with Manudeep Bhuller and Alfred Løvgren

Non peer reviewed work and reports in Norwegian

• Latente eierinntekter og skatteplikt på unoterte aksjer etter aksjonærmodellen (SSB Rapporter 2022/37)

• Verdsetting av unoterte selskaper (SSB Rapporter 2022/31), with Erlend Eide Bø

• Saksbehandlere og arbeidssøkeres overgang til arbeid, report for the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, with Manudeep Bhuller, Gaute Torsvik and Espen Steinung Dahl

• Kapitalflyt og eierskap i Norge, 2004-2018: En deskriptiv analyse (SSB Rapporter 2021/29)

• Hva koster det å stenge utdanningssektoren?  Beregning av kostnader av smittevernstiltak mot COVID-19 for humankapital, studieprogresjon og produktivitet , SSB Rapporter 2020/15, with Sturla Løkken and Simon Bensnes

• Rentebegrensningsregelen: En empirisk evaluering (SSB Rapporter 2019/41) with Frida Kvamme

• Betydningsløs rett til barnehageplass, Samfunnsøkonomen 9, 2014