Educated Politicians and Government Efficiency : Evidence From Norwegian Local Government

The paper studies the effect of politicians’ education levels on government efficiency. Using data on Norwegian local government, the paper measures efficiency by DEA-productivity indicators and comprehensive indicators of service production. The identification of causal effects exploits close (within-list) elections to design an instrumental variable for council shares with higher education.Consistent with survey data, the estimates show that better-educated politicians induce higher levels of efficiency, particularly for old-age care services. A similar empirical strategy indicates that political experience has small efficiency effects. Educational misrepresentation has modest effects on fiscal allocations and is mostly canceled out by the efficiency gains