[History | Organisation | External relations | Conference & Seminar]

Presentation of the Department of Economics

The Department of economics was founded by Professor Ragnar Frisch in 1932 as a research institute under the name of the Institute of Economics. Today it is the university department for teaching at all academic levels as well as research in economics. It is greatly indebted for its proud history to its Nobel laureates Ragnar Frisch and Trygve Haavelmo. The Department has an academic staff of 36 whose interests cover most major fields in economics. There are also staff members working in the fields of mathematics, statistics and demography. The Frisch Centre of Economic Research extends the research environment of the department and adds to the applied research in economics at the University of Oslo.

The Department endeavours to provide the best possible academic qualifications for new economists entering civil service or joining the business community. The Department has a flourishing doctoral programme with about 40 students at various stages of their course work and research. A weekly staff and graduate seminar presents research by own staff as well as visitors from other Norwegian and foreign universities. The research staff publish regularly in reputable academic journals. They will also serve on editorial boards as well as academic and public committees and act as advisors to various levels of government.

The Department has a long tradition of international co-operation and exchange. It welcomes Erasmus exchange students and provides opportunities for Norwegian students for taking courses abroad as part of their degree in Oslo. Courses at the masters and PhD level are taught in English. The department is regularly visited by foreign scholars.

Welcome to Oslo!

History

The Department of Economics of the University of Oslo was founded in 1932. The founder was Nobel laureate Professor Ragnar Frisch, a founder member of the Econometric Society and the first editor of Econometrica. Ragnar Frisch. s . Institute. of Economics was a pure research institute, financed from sources outside the University, the Rockefeller Foundation being the main sponsor. Under the inspiring leadership of Frisch, a team of young economists and statisticians engaged in theoretical and empirical quantitative economic research, creating the groundwork, inter alia, for the system of National Accounts and multi-sectoral planning models that became such a prominent feature of economic policy in Norway after the Second World War.

The teaching of economics, or political economy, was at that time organised as part of the Faculty of Law. While political economy was taught and studied at the University of Oslo from as early as the 1830s it only became possible to take a degree in the subject in 1905. The study of political economy was short, 2 years, and was considered a soft option. Ragnar Frisch himself allegedly chose to take a degree in political economy because it was the easiest way to obtain academic qualifications.

Frisch himself was largely responsible for making the study of economics one of the most challenging disciplines of the University. A law creating the degree Cand. Oecon. (Candidatus Oeconomiae) was passed by the Storting (Parliament) in 1934. The new degree demanded (and continues to demand) five years of study. Mathematics and theoretical statistics were fully integrated parts of the degree, as they still are. Both the structure and the syllabus of the degree have, of course, been changed several times and continuously updated during the last six decades, but the tradition of integrating mathematics and statistics in the study of economics proper has been retained.

The degree in economics (samfunnsøkonomi) was the responsibility of the Section for Economics under the Faculty of Law, the Institute of Economics being an independent institute for research until October 1966. At that date, the Institute and Section for Economics were merged and the Department for Economics created as part of the new Faculty of Social Sciences. In 1968, the Department moved from its previous almost derelict but much loved headquarters in Frederiksgate 3 in the centre of Oslo to the new high-rise campus at Blindern.

By then, Ragnar Frisch had retired as a professor, though he was still active in research and intellectual debate. In 1969, together with Jan Tinbergen of the Netherlands, Frisch was awarded the first Nobel Prize of economics, for his pioneer research in econometrics. Twenty years later, in 1989, Professor Trygve Haavelmo was the second member of our staff to receive the Nobel prize, also for basic research in econometrics.

Organisation

At present the Department of Economics has an academic staff of about 35. We have about 800 undergraduate and graduate students. About 40 post graduates are enrolled in our doctoral programme, leading to the degree of Ph.D.. Organisationally, the Department of Economics belongs to the Faculty of Social Sciences.

External relations

The Department of Economics has formal cooperation agreements with other institutions on research activities, as well as on student exchange programmes:

Link to The Frisch Centre for Economic Research.

International cooperation

Cooperation agreements with foreign universtities focus on exchange programmes, both for students and researchers. Currently we have formal cooperation agreements with Université de Toulouse 1, University of Fudan, Shanghai, University of St.Petersberg, University of Gothenburg and University of Zimbabwe.

Conferences and seminars

Regular seminars

The Department holds two regular seminars. The Friday Lunch Seminar is an informal seminar covering a broad range of topics. The Thursday Economics Seminar is open to all interested, external speakers being in the majority.