Karl Ove Moene
Biographic Data
| ID | 299381 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karl Ove Moene |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karl Ove |
| FAMILY NAME | Moene |
| SIGNATURE | MOENE K O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3290-4536 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1082 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Add and rule
Wheels of Power: Can Free Bicycles for Schoolgirls Free Their Mothers
We study whether a social program to facilitate girls’ schooling in India increases the autonomy of mothers and other female family members. The program gives every girl in grade 9 a cash amount to purchase a bicycle. This targeted in-kind provision has the effect of lowering the price of educating girls. It also signals the worth of young women. We find a strong empowerment effect on older female family members. The effect is strongest in areas …
The Merit Primacy Effect
A long history in economics going back to Adam Smith has argued that people give primacy to merit—rather than luck—in distributive choices. We provide a theoretical framework formalising the merit primacy effect, and study it in a novel experiment where third-party spectators redistribute from high earners to low earners in situations where both merit and luck determine earnings. We identify a strong and consistent merit primacy effect in the spe…
Facts and Fantasies about Wage Setting and Collective Bargaining
In this article, we document and discuss salient features of collective bargaining systems in the OECD countries, with the goal of debunking some misconceptions and myths and revitalizing the general interest in wage setting and collective bargaining. We hope that such an interest may help close the gap between how economists tend to model wage setting and how wages are actually set. Canonical models of competitive labor markets, monopsony, and s…
Social Democracy as a Development Strategy
Social democracy, it is often said, is nice but pricey. Whatever its merits in the rich countries of Western Europe, social democracy is frequently dismissed as an infeasible model for developing countries. Based on generosity towards the poor and protection against market competition, the argument goes, social democracy is only possible in consensual, homogeneous and affluent societies with an extraordinary commitment to equality. In third world…
Egalitarian redistribution in the era of hyper-globalization
Two traditional theorems of welfare economics posit a trade-off between a government redistribution targets and efficiency. We propose a third ‘claim’ of welfare economics, stating that in closed economies the actual efficiency costs associated with redistribution are small. We then examine the claim in the current phase of ‘hyper-globalization’. On the one hand, a race-to-the-bottom in taxation restricts the capacity to tax high-earners and the …
The Equality Multiplier: How Wage Compression and Welfare Empowerment Interact: The Equality Multiplier
We explore how more wage equality fuels the generosity of the welfare state via political competition in elections, and how a more generous welfare state fuels wage equality via empowerment of weak groups in the labor market. Together the two mechanisms may generate a cumulative process that explains how equality multiplies, and why countries with more equal distributions of market outcomes also have stronger welfare states. The complementarity b…
The Preference for Belief Consonance
We consider the determinants and consequences of a source of utility that has received limited attention from economists: people's desire for the beliefs of other people to align with their own. We relate this 'preference for belief consonance' to a variety of other constructs that have been explored by economists, including identity, ideology, homophily, and fellow-feeling. We review different possible explanations for why people care about othe…
Political Reinforcement: How Rising Inequality Curbs Manifested Welfare Generosity
We propose a political reinforcement hypothesis, suggesting that rising inequality moves party politics on welfare state issues to the right, strengthening rather than modifying the impact of inequality. We model policy platforms by incorporating ideology and opportunism of party members and interests and sympathies of voters. If welfare spending is a normal good within income classes, a majority of voters moves rightward when inequality increase…
Opium for the Masses? Conflict-Induced Narcotics Production in Afghanistan
To explain the rise in Afghan opium production, we explore how rising conflicts change the incentives of farmers. Conflicts make illegal opportunities more profitable as they increase the perceived lawlessness and destroy infrastructure crucial to alternative crops. Exploiting a unique data set, we show that Western hostile casualties, our proxy for conflict, have a strong impact on subsequent local opium production. Using the period after the pl…
Miserly Developments
We measure the level of poverty in the midst of affluence using what we denote the miser index. We calculate the index of poverty-induced polarisation for a number of countries. The most miserly countries are in Southern Africa and Latin America. Miserly countries tend to be socially fractionalised, bureaucratically inefficient, and politically corrupt. They provide low levels of healthcare and education. Considering the world as a single entity,…
The tyranny of international index rankings
Governance and Development
Social Democracy as a Development Strategy
Social democracy, it is often said, is nice but pricey. Whatever its merits in the rich countries of Western Europe, social democracy is frequently dismissed as an infeasible model for developing countries. Based on generosity towards the poor and protection against market competition, the argument goes, social democracy is only possible in consensual, homogeneous and affluent societies with an extraordinary commitment to equality. In third world…
Selected Works of Michael Wallerstein: The Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy
Michael Wallerstein was a leader in developing a rigorous comparative political economy approach to understanding substantive issues of inequality, redistribution, and wage-determination. His early death from cancer left both a hole in the profession and a legacy that will surely provide the foundation for research on these topics. This volume collects his most important and influential contributions, organized by topic, with each topic preceded …
Enforcement in informal saving groups
Cursed by Resources or Institutions?
Natural resource‐abundant countries constitute both growth losers and growth winners, and the main difference between the success cases and the cases of failure lies in the quality of institutions. With grabber‐friendly institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down, while with producer‐friendly institutions more natural resources increase income. Such a theory finds strong support in data. A key question we also discuss is if res…
Michael Wallerstein
Michael Wallerstein, the Charlotte Marion Saden Professor of Political Science at Yale University, died on January 7, 2006, at his home in New Haven. He was just short of his 55th birthday. The cause was glioblastoma multiforme, a brain cancer
Institutions and the Resource Curse
Countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners. We claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions. More natural resources push aggregate income down, when institutions are grabber friendly, while more resources raise income, when institutions are producer friendly. We test this theory building on Sachs and Warner's influential works on the resource cur…
Crime induced poverty traps
Fiscal Corruption: A Vice or a Virtue?”––A Comment
Does the Logic of Collective Action Explain the Logic of Corporatism
Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action has provided the dominant framework for understanding the impact of encompassing unions and employers confederations on wage-setting in Western Europe. In particular, scholars have drawn upon Olson's writing to describe corporatism as a means for attaining the collective goods of low unemployment and low inflation in highly unionized labor markets. The strongest impact of corporatist institutions in the l…
Earnings Inequality and Welfare Spending: A Disaggregated Analysis
The welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly financed insurance. Both views are incomplete. Welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts, depending on the design of the policy. The authors explore the political consequences of the mix of redistribution and insurance in the context of studying the impact of income inequality on expenditures in d…
Investing in Health for Economic Development
The small book argues that extended health services to the poor in low income countries can save millions of lives, reduce poverty, spur economic growth and promote global security. How to implement such an optimistic plan in societies with weak infrastructure and bad governance is the critical issue that the authors do not pay enough attention to. The book oversells potential spillover-effects from health to macro economic performance. As there …
Plunder & Protection Inc
When the state fails to supply basic security and protection of property, violent entrepreneurs not only seize the opportunity of plundering, but some also enter the protection business and provide protection against plunderers. This uncoordinated division of labor is advantageous for the entire group of violent entrepreneurs. Hence, in weak states a situation may arise where a large number of violent entrepreneurs can operate side by side as plu…
Institutions and the Resource Curse
Countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners. We claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions. More natural resources push aggregate income down, when institutions are grabber friendly, while more resources raise income, when institutions are producer friendly. We test this theory building on Sachs and Warner's influential works on the resource cur…
Inequality, Social Insurance, and Redistribution
Is the political support for welfare policy higher or lower in less egalitarian societies? We answer the question using a model of welfare policy as publicly financed insurance that pays benefits in a redistributive manner. When voters have both redistributive and insurance motives for supporting welfare spending, the effect of inequality depends on how benefits are targeted. Greater inequality increases support for welfare expenditures when bene…
Earnings Inequality and Welfare Spending: A Disaggregated Analysis
The welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly financed insurance. Both views are incomplete. Welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts, depending on the design of the policy. The authors explore the political consequences of the mix of redistribution and insurance in the context of studying the impact of income inequality on expenditures in d…
The tyranny of international index rankings
Political Reinforcement: How Rising Inequality Curbs Manifested Welfare Generosity
We propose a political reinforcement hypothesis, suggesting that rising inequality moves party politics on welfare state issues to the right, strengthening rather than modifying the impact of inequality. We model policy platforms by incorporating ideology and opportunism of party members and interests and sympathies of voters. If welfare spending is a normal good within income classes, a majority of voters moves rightward when inequality increase…
How Social Democracy Worked: Labor-Market Institutions
Dans les pays nordiques, le corporatisme est associe au libre commerce et a la necessite de demeurer competitif. La centralisation des negociations a permis la reduction des differences salariales et le plein emploi (taux de chomage faible). Mais depuis quelque temps la politique sociale democrate, a l'origine des elements cites precedemment, est en declin non seulement en Europe et aux Etats-Unis mais aussi en Scandinavie
Enforcement in informal saving groups
Plunder & Protection Inc
When the state fails to supply basic security and protection of property, violent entrepreneurs not only seize the opportunity of plundering, but some also enter the protection business and provide protection against plunderers. This uncoordinated division of labor is advantageous for the entire group of violent entrepreneurs. Hence, in weak states a situation may arise where a large number of violent entrepreneurs can operate side by side as plu…
Crime induced poverty traps
Controlling Fiscal Corruption
Union's Threats and Wage Determination
Journal Article Union's Threats and Wage Determination Get access Karl O. Moene Karl O. Moene University of Oslo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 98, Issue 391, 1 June 1988, Pages 471–483, https://doi.org/10.2307/2233378 Published: 01 June 1988
The Preference for Belief Consonance
We consider the determinants and consequences of a source of utility that has received limited attention from economists: people's desire for the beliefs of other people to align with their own. We relate this 'preference for belief consonance' to a variety of other constructs that have been explored by economists, including identity, ideology, homophily, and fellow-feeling. We review different possible explanations for why people care about othe…
Facts and Fantasies about Wage Setting and Collective Bargaining
In this article, we document and discuss salient features of collective bargaining systems in the OECD countries, with the goal of debunking some misconceptions and myths and revitalizing the general interest in wage setting and collective bargaining. We hope that such an interest may help close the gap between how economists tend to model wage setting and how wages are actually set. Canonical models of competitive labor markets, monopsony, and s…
The Merit Primacy Effect
A long history in economics going back to Adam Smith has argued that people give primacy to merit—rather than luck—in distributive choices. We provide a theoretical framework formalising the merit primacy effect, and study it in a novel experiment where third-party spectators redistribute from high earners to low earners in situations where both merit and luck determine earnings. We identify a strong and consistent merit primacy effect in the spe…
Keynesian Unemployment and Overmanning
Journal Article Keynesian Unemployment and Overmanning Get access Karl O. Moene Karl O. Moene University of Oslo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 97, Issue 387, 1 September 1987, Pages 740–745, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232934 Published: 01 September 1987
Union's Threats and Wage Determination
Journal Article Union's Threats and Wage Determination Get access Karl O. Moene Karl O. Moene University of Oslo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 98, Issue 391, 1 June 1988, Pages 471–483, https://doi.org/10.2307/2233378 Published: 01 June 1988
How corruption may corrupt
Is profit sharing a cure for unemployment in less developed countries
Nobel Laureate: Trygve Haavelmo
Trygve Haavelmo was in the United States from 1939 to 1947, and in this period he published most of his path-breaking contributions to econometrics for which the Nobel committee awarded him the prize. His list of publications after 1947 contains more than 100 items. We review his contributions to econometrics only briefly in order to cover his other research, which has focused on the relationship between population, natural resources, and growth;…
Alternativas al capitalismo
How Social Democracy Worked: Labor-Market Institutions
Dans les pays nordiques, le corporatisme est associe au libre commerce et a la necessite de demeurer competitif. La centralisation des negociations a permis la reduction des differences salariales et le plein emploi (taux de chomage faible). Mais depuis quelque temps la politique sociale democrate, a l'origine des elements cites precedemment, est en declin non seulement en Europe et aux Etats-Unis mais aussi en Scandinavie
Redistribution of Assets Versus Redistribution of Income: Comments on “Efficient Redistribution” by Bowles and Gintis
In this comment we compare the asset-based approach of Bowles and Gintis with the alternative approach associated most closely with social democracy but followed in all advanced industrial societies to some extent
Pay Inequality
We investigate the effects of wage compression through centralized collective bargaining when growth depends on the continual reallocation of labor from older, less productive plants to new, more productive plants. We first study the compression of wage differentials that derive from decentralized bargaining in heterogeneous plants. We then consider wage compression when wage difterentials arise from competition among employers over workers of di…
Controlling Fiscal Corruption
Social Democratic Labor Market Institutions: A Retrospective Analysis
The golden age of social democracy in western Europe in terms of both political prominence and economic performance might be dated as beginning in 1966, when the social democrats entered government in West Germany for the first time since 1930, and ending in 1974–1975, with the first serious slump of the postwar period. The high point of social democracy in terms of its academic reputation, however, was just beginning in 1974. During the 1960s an…
Inequality, Social Insurance, and Redistribution
Is the political support for welfare policy higher or lower in less egalitarian societies? We answer the question using a model of welfare policy as publicly financed insurance that pays benefits in a redistributive manner. When voters have both redistributive and insurance motives for supporting welfare spending, the effect of inequality depends on how benefits are targeted. Greater inequality increases support for welfare expenditures when bene…
Investing in Health for Economic Development
The small book argues that extended health services to the poor in low income countries can save millions of lives, reduce poverty, spur economic growth and promote global security. How to implement such an optimistic plan in societies with weak infrastructure and bad governance is the critical issue that the authors do not pay enough attention to. The book oversells potential spillover-effects from health to macro economic performance. As there …
Plunder & Protection Inc
When the state fails to supply basic security and protection of property, violent entrepreneurs not only seize the opportunity of plundering, but some also enter the protection business and provide protection against plunderers. This uncoordinated division of labor is advantageous for the entire group of violent entrepreneurs. Hence, in weak states a situation may arise where a large number of violent entrepreneurs can operate side by side as plu…
Fiscal Corruption: A Vice or a Virtue?”––A Comment
Does the Logic of Collective Action Explain the Logic of Corporatism
Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action has provided the dominant framework for understanding the impact of encompassing unions and employers confederations on wage-setting in Western Europe. In particular, scholars have drawn upon Olson's writing to describe corporatism as a means for attaining the collective goods of low unemployment and low inflation in highly unionized labor markets. The strongest impact of corporatist institutions in the l…
Earnings Inequality and Welfare Spending: A Disaggregated Analysis
The welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly financed insurance. Both views are incomplete. Welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts, depending on the design of the policy. The authors explore the political consequences of the mix of redistribution and insurance in the context of studying the impact of income inequality on expenditures in d…
Crime induced poverty traps
Cursed by Resources or Institutions?
Natural resource‐abundant countries constitute both growth losers and growth winners, and the main difference between the success cases and the cases of failure lies in the quality of institutions. With grabber‐friendly institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down, while with producer‐friendly institutions more natural resources increase income. Such a theory finds strong support in data. A key question we also discuss is if res…
Michael Wallerstein
Michael Wallerstein, the Charlotte Marion Saden Professor of Political Science at Yale University, died on January 7, 2006, at his home in New Haven. He was just short of his 55th birthday. The cause was glioblastoma multiforme, a brain cancer
Institutions and the Resource Curse
Countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners. We claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions. More natural resources push aggregate income down, when institutions are grabber friendly, while more resources raise income, when institutions are producer friendly. We test this theory building on Sachs and Warner's influential works on the resource cur…
Social Democracy as a Development Strategy
Social democracy, it is often said, is nice but pricey. Whatever its merits in the rich countries of Western Europe, social democracy is frequently dismissed as an infeasible model for developing countries. Based on generosity towards the poor and protection against market competition, the argument goes, social democracy is only possible in consensual, homogeneous and affluent societies with an extraordinary commitment to equality. In third world…
Selected Works of Michael Wallerstein: The Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy
Michael Wallerstein was a leader in developing a rigorous comparative political economy approach to understanding substantive issues of inequality, redistribution, and wage-determination. His early death from cancer left both a hole in the profession and a legacy that will surely provide the foundation for research on these topics. This volume collects his most important and influential contributions, organized by topic, with each topic preceded …
Enforcement in informal saving groups
Governance and Development
Economics (30 works) · Political science (27 works) · Law (21 works) · Labour economics (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Corruption and Economic Development (7 works)