In the twentieth century there was a significant trend towards larger local governments through amalgamations in the western world. Amalgamations provide potential economic benefits but might also give rise to costs driven by opportunistic political behavior. This study uses a compulsory...

We rigorously test for ethnic discrimination in high school grading in Sweden. A random sample of the national tests in the Swedish language is graded both non-blind by the student's own teacher and blind without any identifying information. The increase in the test score due to non-blind...