Welcome to Eric Nævdal's home page.

For whatever reason, you have opened the file index.htm in my internet directory here at the University of Oslo. I am Eric Nævdal, a Senior Researcher at the The Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research. Here I work with issues related to health and environmental economics. I am also associated with the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis.  I can be reached by electronic mail. My particular interest in health economics is the control of epidemics. Earlier in my career I have worked on a large range of issues. Here are a few highlights:

• The economics of binge drinking.
• Behaviour in animals.
• Threshold effects in dynamic resource management.

For reasons that I have never completely grasped, pages like these often contain a CV. Some working papers and other work related stuff (e.g. computer code) is available here. One of the nice things of being a senior researcher is that you get to latch on to the work of younger, more talented researchers and exploit them for personal gain and fame. Here is a video of me riding on the coattails of Florian Diekert. (Here is the same video in a somewhat inferior but more common file format.) Occasionally I participate in public discourse. That is; I write stuff in newspapers. Here and here are a few examples.

But life isn't all work. I also have a great family. My wonderful children William and Alexander fill my life with joy and wonder. As we are too cheap to pay for a separate web-page for William, I have started letting him put his artwork here. And here is Alexander singing a song. Large parts of summer 2009 have been spent walking around Østmarka with my son William. Here are some pictures. After William left for the army, Alexander wanted to go for the Very Big Swimming Button. After that they wore the King’s clothes.

Summer 2010 I went on a canoeing trip in Northern Finland and Norway. This trip is documented here.

On Mountain Biking.

In May, 2011 I started a debate on mountain biking in a Norwegian newspaper. This piece made me, for a while, one of the most hated men in Norway. In this piece I made a number of statements that were vehemently denied by proponents of mountain biking. I have documented my statements here (in Norwegian).

Signs of Creativity!

Many people think that just because you are an economist you are necessarily without any trace of creativity in your soul. Not so. I have myself had creative ideas on no less than three occasions. These are:

1) Finding a way of making children love hiking in the forests. My method should make many families a lot happier. You’re welcome.

2) I have designed an emoticon. Did it myself. After extensive googling it is clear that I was in fact the first one to create this emoticon. There are thousands of people that can claim to have written well-published research articles. The number of people who can claim to have invented an emoticon is far fewer. It is a bit saucy and can be found here.

3) I have started a political movement. I have designed the banner under which we will march. It is here. Of course the ideology of this movement has collected inspiration from the Great Teacher himself. I can not reveal the name of this teacher as this would reveal our secret strategy, but if you ask a different question the solution will be 42.

I have the best job in the world. One of the reasons why I think so is that nobody cares if I occasionally take time to do stuff like this. I am a big fan of Concerned by Christopher C. Livingston. If you don’t know about Half-Life, this comic will make no sense. Here is my feeble attempt at fan art.