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Leif Anders Thorsrud is Associate Professor at the BI Norwegian Business School, and manager of the research centre CAMP (Centre for Applied Macroeconomics and Commodity Prices) at the BI Norwegian Business School. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and International Relations, and a Master of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Oslo. He obtained his Phd in Economics from BI Norwegian Business School.
His main area of research is within applied macroeconomics, time series, and machine learning. Special interests include the study of natural resources, business cycles, textual analysis and forecasting. He has published in leading journals such as the Economic Journal, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, and Journal of Applied Econometrics. He is also the co-author of the book “Applied Time Series Macroeconomics”.
Thorsrud has previously held positions as staff economist at Norges Bank and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and as senior researcher at Norges Bank.
In this paper we develop the first model to incorporate the dynamic productivity consequences of both the spending effect and the resource movement effect of oil abundance. We show that doing so dramatically alters the conclusions drawn from earlier models of learning by doing (LBD) and the Dutch disease. In particular, the resource movement effect suggests that the growth effects of natural resources are likely to be positive, turning previous growth results in the literature relying on the spending effect on their head. We motivate the relevance of our approach by the example of a major oil producer, Norway. Empirically we find that the effects of an increase in the price of oil may resemble results found in the earlier Dutch disease literature, while the effects of increased oil activity increases productivity in most industries. Therefore, models that only focus on windfall gains due to increased spending potential from higher oil prices, would conclude – incorrectly based on our analysis – that the resource sector cannot be an engine of growth.
Bjørnland, Hilde C & Thorsrud, Leif Anders (2018)
Commodity prices and fiscal policy design: Procyclical despite a rule