The Norwegian Oil Fund. a Principal-Agent Analysis of Political Decisions

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, University of applied sciences, Munich, language: English, abstract: This assignment investigates the decisions that were made by Norway’s Finance Minister Siv Jensen and Prime Minister Erna Solberg in 2016 to withdraw money from the Government Pension Fund Global in order to compensate for a governmental budget deficit. The starting point will be a brief overview over Norway’s economic situation and a look into the structure and the investment strategy of the oil fund. The analysis of the decision to plunge into the fund is based on the Principal-Agent Theory and the Consumption-Saving Decision and therefore these theories are explained further on. The political decision is then analysed based on these theories, and outcomes of alternative decisions are depicted.