This paper estimates a locational choice model to assess the demand for local public services, using a data set where individuals chooses between 26 municipalities within a local labor market. We assess the importance of the IIA assumption by comparing the predictions of three difference models;...

Do governments increase public employment in election years? This paper investigates this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two coun¬tries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. We can thereby separate an election...

In this paper we investigate the extent to which local government consumption in Sweden is determined by permanent rather than current resources. Evidence from a panel of municipalities indicates that most consumption (90-95 percent) is associated with permanent resources. That is, spending...

The paper investigates the intertemporal spending behavior of Scandinavian local governments with particular attention to liquidity constraints imposed by balanced-budget-rules and other regulations. The main finding is that Danish local governments are more able to smooth current expenditures...

In a Regression Kink (RK) design with a finite sample, a confounding smooth nonlinear relationship between an assignment variable and an outcome variable around a threshold can be spuriously picked up as a kink and result in a biased estimate. In order to investigate how well RK designs handle...

In a Regression Kink (RK) design with a finite sample, a confounding smooth nonlinear relationship between an assignment variable and an outcome variable around a threshold can be spuriously picked up as a kink and result in a biased estimate. In order to investigate how well RK designs handle...

While the literature on how intergovernmental grants affect the budget of receiving jurisdictions is numerous, the very few studies that explicitly deal with likely endogeneity problems focus on grants targeted towards specific sectors or to specific type of recipients. The results from these...

The paper investigates the intertemporal spending behavior of Scandinavian local governments with particular attention to liquidity constraints imposed by balanced-budget-rules and other regulations. The main finding is that Danish local governments are more able to smooth current expenditures...

While the literature on how intergovernmental grants affect the budget of receiving jurisdictions is numerous, the very few studies that explicitly deal with likely endogeneity problems focus on grants targeted towards specific sectors or to specific type of recipients. The results from these...

This paper first formulates a model of how the politicians in a local government collectively lobby to raise intergovernmental grants to their local government. The model identifies a relationship between council size and grants received. I then study this relationship empirically using the...