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...

This paper investigates the long-term effects of local government education spending on child outcomes, including income, educational attainment, and family formation in adulthood. We propose a novel identification strategy which exploits quasirandom variation in demographic trends when there is...

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...

Abstract Standard economic models predict that individuals smooth consumption over the life cycle. In contrast, there exists controversial empirical evidence showing that consumption declines at retirement. This paper investigates whether there is evidence for this so-called Retirement...

Using administrative panel data from Norway, we investigate the development of household labor income, financial wealth and asset holdings over a nine-year period surrounding job loss. Consistent with a simple theoretical model, the data show precautionary saving and a shift toward safer assets...