Economic Exchange

Photos By: Provided by Susan Kayser and Nick Puncer

   A partnership between University of Cincinnati and the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) gives economics students from both universities the opportunity to study abroad and learn about the vast differences between U.S. and Norwegian economic policy.

UC students Susan Kayser, Yan Li, Saurabh Niraula, Alex Boerger and Nick Puncer participated in the NHH's summer graduate program.

Five UC students just returned from Bergen, Norway where they participated in a three-week intensive course called “Natural Resource Management and Policy: The Norwegian Model.”

“The course basically looks at how Norway manages their resources for the benefit of the public,” says Nick Puncer, a senior business economics and finance double major. “It’s a lot different than how other countries do it.”

Puncer and fellow senior Susan Kayser (also a business economics and finance double major) attended the summer program with three UC graduate students: Alex Boerger, Yan Li and Saurabh Niraula. While there, they interacted with other international students as they attended lectures by business professionals and studied the various industries that make up the Norwegian economy.

The students spent three weeks in Bergen, Norway where they hiked mountains and enjoyed the 16 hours of daily sun.

“We were in class for seven hours a day for two weeks, but it never got old because the instructors did a good job of keeping topics fresh,” says Kayser. “We would cover the electricity market one day, then fishery the next.

“The program isn’t offered at UC—or many other schools—so it was great to be given the opportunity to study something I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”

Debashis Pal, an economics professor who has worked with NHH faculty in the past, thought the collaboration would be a great way to introduce the topic to UC students while also showing them to the unique welfare state that characterizes Norway. In exchange, NHH sends up to five of their students to UC during winter and spring quarters to take classes in McMicken’s economics department as well as the College of Business.

Nick Puncer and Susan Kayser, both senior business economics students, thought the program helped prepare them for graduate school.

“It’s a wonderful program and the students learn a lot,” Pal says. “Since the Norwegian system is very different and state-controlled, they like to expose their students to how things are done in the United States.”
While NHH students have been coming to UC for two years now, this summer marked the first visit for UC students in Bergen. All five UC students received travel aid, but NHH doesn’t charge the students tuition to attend—a generous notion on their part considering UC students get six credit hours for their three weeks abroad.

“UC did a good job of putting this within reach for the students,” Puncer said, who received funding from the economics department, while most of the other students received grants from the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center and the Hewett-Kautz Fund. “Norway is an incredibly expensive country and if I had to finance the trip myself, I wouldn’t have been able to have the experiences that I did.”

“It was a good experience,” Kayser agrees. “It was great to be taught how to look at their industries and see how they affect world economies.”

Both students praise their interactions with other students. Fifteen countries were represented in the 37 students that participated.

“It helped me to become more open-minded,” Puncer says. “Someone who has been in Kazakhstan through the fall of communism and the liberalization of a planned economy will have a very different perspective than you, and it makes you think about a lot of your own assumptions.”