I'm a Professor in Economics at the Department of Economics at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway. I was previously an Associate Professor in Economics at the School of Economics of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. Before that, I was a Research Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at NTNU, and a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. I got my PhD in economics from the University of Zurich. I am an affiliate with the CESifo Network, a member of CSERGE at UEA, a researcher with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, a member of the Committee for Environmental and Resource Economics of the German Economic Association (Verein für Socialpolitik), and an External Research Associate at OxCarre, University of Oxford. I am Co-Editor and Editorial Board Member for the journal Environmental and Resource Economics, Associate Editor for the Frontiers in Environmental Economics section on Resource Economics, and co-editor (with P. Lujala and D. Vela Almeida) of the Handbook of Transparency and Accountability in Natural Resource Governance, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (due for publication in 2026).
My research interests are in applied economics. I've mainly explored topics in economic growth and development, particularly in resource economics and conflict studies, but also in political economy. A main area of research is the natural resource curse, and I've recently been studying how we can change attitudes and behaviour for better natural resource (revenue) management using behavioural economics, for example by using videos and role models. I use secondary data, as well as primary data gathered through surveys, field experiments, lab-in-the-field experiments, and survey experiments.
