Governments struggle with rising service spending, and user charges represent a possible incentive mechanism to control costs. This paper investigates the relationships between costs and user charges in the sewage industry in Norwegian local governments. The analysis addresses the following...

The paper analyzes the intertemporal spending behavior of Norwegian local governments with particular attention to liquidity constraints imposed by balanced-budget rules. The main findings are: (i) On average, local government spending behavior is neither perfectly forward looking nor fully...

The paper performs an efficiency analysis of lower secondary schools in Norway. The efficiency potential is calculated as 14%, based on a DEA analysis with grades in core subjects (adjusted for student characteristics and family background) as outputs. The analysis of the determinants of...

The paper integrates two mechanisms of economic growth, barriers to international spillovers and skill - biased effects on the income distribution. South Africa is an interestin g case study because of dramatic changes in international barriers over time and policy focus to productivity and...

Fiscal federalism implies a challenge of holding fiscal discipline at the local level. Recent analyses of fiscal adjustment have addressed the design of fiscal and political institutions for the U.S. states, and have shown how tax limits and anti-deficit rules strengthen immediate shock...