About me

I am Knut Anton Mork, and Dismal Science Norway is my economic analysis firm. The term “dismal science” is reported to have been coined by the Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle to describe the field of economics. The gloominess implied by this term was reportedly inspired by the pessimistic predictions of never-ending poverty made by Thomas Malthus, another Scot, and a clergyman at that. For me, it also fits with the reputation I believe I developed after predicting the collapse of the IT bubble of the 1990s as well as the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble and the ensuing recession of global financial crisis in 2007 – 09.

 Those who believe I am a constant pessimist are wrong, however. In reality, I try to stay reasonably optimistic about the future of the human race. We have made great strides over the centuries and millennia. Even considering the horrors of the two world wars, two nuclear bombs, and the large number of terrible subsequent conflicts, those who study the human condition say it is actually better now than in previous centuries. That gives me a measure of comfort.

 However, we also face a number of not-so-pleasant realities. Billions of people live in poverty and/or are oppressed by authoritarian leaders and terrorist regimes. Our use of fossil fuels is threatening to make our planet inhabitable, while my own government is squandering much of the wealth we accumulated by profiting from extracting the same fossil fuels. As an economist, I want to make my contribution to the efforts of rectifying some of these wrongs.

As an economist, I am also used to be categorized as a person without emotions, sympathy, or empathy, someone who only thinks about money. However, before I became an economist, I was a person, a human, and I still am. I do not believe in economics as a religion; I detest statements claiming that something is economically right or wrong. Economics is to me a field of inquiry, a science that seeks to understand and explain what happens in economic matters and why. This kind of understanding can surely also be helpful in designing policies attempting to make the world work better. I want very much to contribute to such efforts. But the question of what is “better” must come from a set of moral values, not economic theory.

 My own values derive from the Christian-humanistic European tradition. I believe people should treat each other with respect regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, faith, or sexual preferences. We should also respect each other’s beliefs even when, or especially when they disagree with our own. I detest violence even as I acknowledge the need to forcibly resist aggression and terrorism. I also believe we should be willing to forgive each other’s trespasses. That belief is sometimes hard to reconcile with economists’ belief in incentives. I realize that the prospect of forgiveness may serve as an incentive to continue one’s trespasses. But that doesn’t stop me from believing in forgiveness. I believe humans can make more fundamental commitments than emotionless utility maximization.

About my background

Economics wasn’t my first subject. I started my academic studies with a two-year program in Christian religion. However, I realized that my calling, if that is what it was, went in a more secular direction. After military service I entered business school. There, I almost failed my first course in macroeconomics, my present specialty. However, after a second course, in microeconomics, I was hooked on economics. Studying social issues with seemingly mathematical precision,appealed to me. I soon decided to aim for a PhD and was lucky enough to be admitted to MIT, where I had teachers like Bob Solow and Peter Diamond, who later were awarded Nobel Prizes, a classmate like Paul Krugman who got a Nobel of his own, and people in the classes right before and after me, like Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi, who got to run the world’s two most important central banks, and Olivier Blanchard, who served as the IMF’s chief economist during the global financial crisis.

My first job after graduation was at the MIT Energy Lab, where my main task was to examine whether the inflation and recession of the 1970s could be explained as the results of OPEC’s quadrupling of oil prices in the fall of 1973. We found that it could. The topic of oil price shocks continued to pursue me as I moved on from MIT to two years at the University of Arizona and another seven years at Vanderbilt University. 

I then moved with my family back to my native Norway and, after another four years as an academic, decided to seek practical applications of my field in the finance industry, where I ended up as the Chief Economist of Handelsbanken Norway for two decades. That move brought me back to the links between oil and the rest of the economy as the oil industry came to dominate the Norwegian economy during exactly this period. 

After leaving the bank for mandatory retirement, I went back to academia with a half-time appointment at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). I continued to work on oil-related issues, including a book in Norwegian on oil and the Norwegian economy and research on some of the issues regarding the management of the Norwegian petroleum fund and the rules for withdrawals from that fund of money to finance current government spending. 

About my current interests

Although oil and gas has brought great benefits to humanity, it is both a finite resource and, together with coal, the major cause of global warming. That makes it urgent for the global economy to switch to renewable energy and for the Norwegian economy to find a new leg to stand on once the oil and gas business ends.

Just as the climate crisis was about to get more serious, the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which was followed by a big round of inflation, rising interest rates, and fear of recession. At the same time, Russia invaded Ukraine, and a year or so later, the Middle East blew up again. This confluence of crises inspired me to start a new book project, on crises that occur in parallel, that interact with each other, and whose solutions give rise to serious conflicts. Looking ahead, the book will look at the steadily worsening climate crises, future pandemics, war and nuclear terror, demographics and migration, and the challenge to develop new industries in countries that currently rely on the production of fossil fuels as their source of wealth. This is a challenge that Norway shares with other countries whose economies are dominated by the natural-resources industry, such as Canada, Australia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Plans and preparations made, if any, in these countries, will be important inputs to my discussion of the Norwegian case.

I will also continue to pursue the issues surrounding the Norwegian petroleum fund, which currently finances about 20% of government spending. My research so far has uncovered major flaws in the government’s current strategy, which allows for a 70% share of the portfolio to be invested in equities and for annual withdrawals corresponding to the fund’s real financial return, stipulated at a rate of 3%. Although this strategy is intended to maintain the fund’s real value for future generations, I find that it is bound to deplete it eventually, and that current policies imply a 50% risk of depletion within the next 80 years. My ambition is to derive an alternative set of rules that can help attain the targets that the policy makers have set up. I am currently looking for a graduate student with coding skills who can help me obtain numerical solutions to the model or models a will be looking at.

Last, but not least, I continue, as ever, to monitor and analyze current events in the global economy and indeed the global community. This is important for my work for Garantum Wealth Management Norge AS whom I serve as macroeconomic advisor. I also need it for my contributions to the Board of Directors of CTS Nordics Holding AS, which I joined in September 2023.