We examine how in-kind transfers provided by local governments affect economic inequality. The allocation of in-kind transfers to households and the adjustment for differences in needs are derived from a model of local government spending behavior. The model distinguishes between fixed and...

A cooperative bargaining model is adapted to the setting of local government in Norway. Aggregate consumption, the capital stock and net financial wealth in the local public sector are endogenized. The origin of intertia in the model is ascribed to incrementalism or adjustment costs in the...

An extended community preference model including real and financial investments is estimated on accounting time-series data for the local public sector in Norway. The estimation results indicate considerable sluggishness in local public spending, both in current expenditure and investment...

This paper treats local governments as utility maximizing agents when they allocate resources among different service sectors. We present estimates for eight service sectors, based on a modified version of the extended linear expenditure system (ELES) and using observations at the municipal...

Fiscal disparities arise from differences in costs and capacity to produce a standard package of public services. This paper proposes to use a structural modelling approach as basis for measuring fiscal disparities across municipalities. This approach differs from the widely used reduced-form...

When private goods are publicly provided at subsidized prices, government authorities have to determine the distribution of services on recipients. Such distributions are commonly based on legal regulations and professional guidelines. Thus governments are assumed to develop service standards...

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of how local public in-kind benefits affect the distribution of income in Norway. To this end, a method that accounts for differences between municipalities in capacity to produce the same standard of public services is used for assessing the...

Governments that pursue welfare and equalization goals frequently target cash transfers to individuals that suffer from limited economic opportunities and poverty. To achieve the desired allocation of welfare benefits, evaluation of individual needs is thus required. However, the political...

The mobility of the tax base may influence fiscal outcomes. The many theoretical contributions about the role of mobility are not matched by empirical evidence. Existing studies address strategic interaction between governments, but have little to say about mobility. We introduce a new measure...

Despite a broad consensus on the need to account for the value of public services and geographical cost of living differences on the measurement of poverty, there is little reliable evidence on how these factors actually affect poverty estimates. Unlike the standard approach in studies of the...