Sturla F. Kvamsdal

Sturla F. Kvamsdal

Senior Researcher

Academic title: PhD

Academic profile

I am an environmental and resource economist with a multidisciplinary background: I have a degree in mathematics and am qualified at the professor level both in operations research and in sustainability economics. My main position is senior researcher here at SNF. I am also adjunct professor at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and associate editor of the journal Natural Resource Modeling. I currently lead the CASINO-project funded by the Research Council of Norway, and occasionally, I am convener of Bergen Fisheries Economics Workshop. I do research on natural capital measures, integrated ocean management, and climate change in the Arctic. I also do some research in public economics. The methods I use include optimization and dynamic programming, Kalman filtering, and various econometric and machine learning methods. My teaching experience includes sustainable energy economics, environmental economics, corporate environmental responsibility, and the ethics of climate change.

Selected publications

  • Kvamsdal, S.F. A model for quota prices in the Norwegian groundfish fishery. Natural Resource Modeling, forthcoming.
  • Hopland, A.O., S.F. Kvamsdal. Determinants of public building conditions. Applied Economics, forthcoming (doi: 10.1080/00036846.2025.2583484).
  • Ni, Y., A.O. Hopland, S.F. Kvamsdal (2025). Seasonality and growth in the generalized bioeconomic model. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, forthcoming (doi: 10.1111/ajae.70023).
  • Singh et al. [incl. S.F. Kvamsdal] (2025). Small fish, big implications: considerations for an ecosystem approach to capelin fisheries management. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, forthcoming (doi: 10.1007/s11160-025-09986-z).
  • Hopland, A.O., S.F. Kvamsdal (2025). Condition of local public buildings and the quality of local welfare services. Facilities 43(3/4), 173-186, (doi: 10.1108/f-082024-0116).
  • Haraldsvik, M., Hopland, A.O., Kvamsdal, S.F. (2024). Determinants of municipal investments. Applied Economics, 56(59), 8623-8636 (doi: 10.1080/00036846.2023.2293083).
  • Ashrafi, T.A., Hermansen, Ø., Kvamsdal S.F. (2023). The effect of quota portfolio composition on optimal harvest strategy and profitability in a multi-species fishery. ICES Journal of Marine Science 80(8), 2099-2113 (doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsad135).
  • Ni, Y., Sandal, L.K., Kvamsdal, S.F., Hansen, C. (2023). Using feedforward neural networks to represent ecosystem dynamics for bioeconomic analysis. Marine Ecology Progress Series 716, 1-15 (doi: 10.3354/meps14360).
  • Hopland, A.O., Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). Drinking water contamination and treatment costs. Water Resources and Economics 43, 100225 (doi: 10.1016/j.wre.2023.100225).
  • Ni, Y., Sandal, L.K., Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). Greed is good: heuristic adaptations for resilience in renewable resource management. Natural Resource Modeling 36(2), e12367 (doi: 10.1111/nrm.12367).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). An exploratory analysis of warming effects on wealth in the Barents Sea fisheries. Economic Analysis and Policy 77, 34-50  (doi: 10.1016/j.eap.2022.10.016).
  • Kvamsdal, S., A.O. Hopland, Y. Li, and S. Selle (2023). Expert opinions on threats and impacts in the marine environment. Marine Policy 147, 105382 (doi: 10.1016/j.marpol.2022.105382).
  • Hopland, A.O. and Kvamsdal, S.F. (2022). Tap water quality: In the eye of the beholder. Journal of Water & Health 20(9), 1436-1444 (doi: 10.2166/wh.2022.151).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., Dankel, D., Ekerhovd, N.-A., Hoel, A.H., Renner, A., Sandø, A.B., and Steinshamn, S.I. (2022). Multidisciplinary perspectives on living marine resources in the Arctic. Polar Research 41, 7766, (doi: 10.33265/polar.v41.7766).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2022). Optimal Management of a Renewable Resource Under Multiple Regimes. Environmental and Resource Economics 81(3), 481-499 (doi: 10.1007/s10640-021-00636-z). 
  • Sandal, L.K., Kvamsdal, S.F., Maroto, J.M., and M. Morán (2021). A contraction approach to dynamic optimization problems. PLoS ONE 16(11): e0260257 (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260257). 
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., I. Belik, A.O. Hopland, and Y. Li. (2021). A machine learning analysis of the recent environmental and resource economics literature. Environmental & Resource Economics 79(1), 93-115 (doi: 10.1007/s10640-021-00554-0).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., J.M. Maroto, M. Moran, and L.K. Sandal (2020). Bioeconomic modeling of seasonal fisheries. European Journal of Operational Research 281(2), 332-340 (doi: 10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.031).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., L.K. Sandal, and D. Poudel (2020). Ecosystem wealth in the Barents Sea. Ecological Economics 171, 106602 (doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106602).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2019). Indexing of Technical Change in Aggregated Data. Computational Economics 53(3), 901-920 (doi: 10.1007/s10614-017-9771-8).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2016). Technical Change as a Stochastic Trend in a Fisheries Model. Marine Resource Economics 31(4), 403-419 (doi: 10.1086/687931).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., A. Eide, N.-A. Ekerhovd, K. Enberg, A. Gudmundsdottir, A.H. Hoel, K. Mills, F. Mueter, L. Ravn-Jonsen, L.K. Sandal, J.E. Stiansen, and N. Vestergaard (2016). Harvest Control Rules in Modern Fisheries Management. Elementa 4, 114 (doi: 10.12952/journal. elementa.000114).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., D. Poudel, and L.K. Sandal (2016). Harvesting in a Fishery with Stochastic Growth and a Mean-Reverting Price. Environmental & Resource Economics 63(3), 643-663 (doi: 10.1007/s10640-014-9857-x).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F., S.M. Stohs (2014). Estimating Endangered Species Interaction Risk with the Kalman Filter. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 96(2), 458-468 (doi: 10.1093/ajae/aat092).

Main research projects

CASINO: Winners and losers in the climate casino (Research Council of Norway, project no. 325665).

Production in the Barents Sea Fisheries (Research Council of Norway, project no. 302197).

ARC-Change: ARCtic Marine Resources under Climate Change: Environmental, Socio-Economic Perspectives and Governance (Research Council of Norway, project no. 257630).

EINSAM: Ecosystem-Economic Interactions in the Norwegian Sea: Analysis and Management (Research Council of Norway, project no. 234238).

BMAME - Bioeconomic Multispecies Analysis of Marine Ecosystems (Research Council of Norway, project no. 196433)

Miscellaneous

  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). A matter of time: Discrete versus continuous time in bioeconomic models. SNF Working Paper 09/23.
  • Hopland, A.O., Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). Water treatment costs and impacts on drinking water quality. Global Water Forum 2023/07/06 (link).
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). Assimilation. In Dictionary of Ecological Economics (eds. B.M. Haddad, B.D. Solomon), Edward Elgar Publishing (doi: 10.4337/9781788974912.A.42)
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2023). Assimilative capacity. In Dictionary of Ecological Economics (eds. B.M. Haddad, B.D. Solomon), Edward Elgar Publishing (doi: 10.4337/9781788974912.A.43)
  • Kvamsdal, S.F. (2018). All the Boats on the Ocean. How Government Subsidies Led to Global Overfishing. By Carmel Finley [review]. Marine Resource Economics 33(1), 113-117 (doi: 10.1086/696003).
  • Eskeland, G., Kvamsdal, S.F. (2015). Naturressurser og økonomer: Naturressursenes økonomi. Samfunnsøkonomen Nr. 1, 2015, 81-83 (in Norwegian).