As a professor at the Department of Economics, I head the research group Political Economy. Broadly speaking, my research interests cover the following fields

• Development economics
• International economics
• Political economy

Of course, I'm happy to combine these topics. The bulk of my actual research has been on foreign aid and other financial flows to developing countries. I'd label myself an applied theorist. This implies that I'm interested in analysing how the world actually works given what we currently know, which hopefully contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the empirical observations that constituted the starting point. However, I've also done empirical work on e.g. aid dispersion and in my main current project on assisted return programmes both theoretical and empirical methods are applied.

I now teach international macroeconomics (ECON230) at the bachelor level and development economics (ECON315) at the master level.

I'm one of the editors of Samfunnsøkonomen, the journal of the Norwegian Economic Association. My editorials are

• Ute av kurs? Samfunnsøkonomen 5-2024.
• Den gordiske knuten. Samfunnsøkonomen. 2-2024
• Hvor lenge var Adam i paradis? Samfunnsøkonomen 6-2023.
• En prosent her og en prosent der. Samfunnsøkonomen 3-2023.
• Bistand og støtte. Samfunnsøkonomen 6-2022.
• Vil sanksjonene mot Russland være effektive? Samfunnsøkonomen 2-2022.
• Grønn bistand til svarte land? Samfunnsøkonomen 5-2021. 
• Krisens muligheter. Samfunnsøkonomen 2-2021.
• I grenseland. Samfunnsøkonomen 6-2020.
• KRISE. Samfunnsøkonomen 2-2020.
• Norsk bistand: reformert og revitalisert? Samfunnsøkonomen 6-2019.

I'm also a lecturer in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in Economics of Globalisation and European Integration, administered by the University of Bari, where I teach a module on development finance. I help organise the annual conference on the Economics of Global Interactions: New Perspectives on Trade, Factor Mobility, and Development, an event that is hosted by Bari.

Spring 2025: ECON315

Autumn 2025: ECON230

Selected international publications:

• Can We Define Global Collective Action Problems Away? Journal of International Development, 37(1), 107-128 (2025).
• Strategic Interaction in the Market for Charitable Donations: the Role of Public Funding (with Jørn Rattsø), Journal of Public Economic Theory, 26(1), e12681 (2024).
• Losing Concentration? Lessons from a Swedish Aid Policy Reform, Development Policy Review, 36, O984-O1003 (2018).
• Help not needed? Optimal Quotas for Expatriate NGO Workers (with Ami Glazer and Jørn Rattsø), Review of International Economics 26, 302–321 (2018).
• Aid Dispersion: Measurement in Principle and Practice (with Cathrin Fløgstad), World Development, 97, 232-250 (2017).
• Rents and the Political Economy of Development Aid, chapter 15 in R.D. Congleton and A.L. Hillman (eds), Companion to Political Economy of Rent Seeking, Edward Elgar, 2015.
• “Dancing to the Donors’ Tune? Policy-Choice in Aid-Dependent Countries,”  Scandinavian Journal of Economics 117(1), 126-163 (2015).
• "Do Non-Enforceable Contracts matter? Evidence from an International Lab Experiment." Review of Income and Wealth 60(1), 100-113 (2014) (with Alexander Cappelen, Erik Ø. Sørensen, and Bertil Tungodden).
• "Certified or Branded? A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the IMF's Policy Support Instrument." Review of International Organizations 7 (2012): 203-230.
• "Basic Analytics of Multilateral Lending and Surveillance." Journal of International Economics 79 (2009):126-136.
• "Buying Influence. Aid Fungibility in a Strategic Perspective." Review of Development Economics 10(2): 267-284 (2006).
• “Samaritan Agents? On the Strategic Delegation of Aid Policy.” Journal of Development Economics 79(1): 249-263 (2006).

Recent projects:

• Mellom politikk og statistikk: Globale fellesgoder i utviklingspolitikken (CMI-project financed by Norad where I was one of the authors of the final report).
• Aid Fragmentation, Donor Coordination, and Selectivity, project for the Expert Group for Evaluation and Analysis of Swedish International Aid (output: Concentration Difficulties? An Analysis of Swedish Aid Proliferation, EBA-report 2015:03

Work in progress:

• Theory and Evidence on the Boomerang Effect of Assisted Return Schemes (with Nicola Coniglio). Paper presented at Economics of Global Interactions, University of Bari, September 2023.
• Cross-Boundary Asylum Policy spillovers: evidence from Sweden (with Nicola Coniglio). Paper presented at Economics of Global Interactions, University of Bari, September 2024).
• Optimal Assisted Return Policies Are Dynamically Inconsistent (with Nicola Coniglio), mimeo.
• Gatekeeper? The IMF, Aid Flows, and Policymaking in Low Income Countries. Paper presented at Development Economics and Policy, University of Göttingen, June 2017.