Recent theoretical research suggests that property taxation has incentive effects that can help control cost problems in the public sector. The institutional setting in Norway allows this first empirical investigation of the incentive effect of property taxation, since we can separate between...

The large variation in revenues among Norwegian local governments can partly be explained by revenues collected from hydropower production. This revenue variation, combined with good data availability, can be used to extend the literature on the re- source curse in two directions. First, to...

The purpose of the paper is to empirically investigate the determinants of maintenance spending and building conditions in Norwegian local governments. In the popular debate there is a concern that low levels of maintenance spending leads to poor building conditions, and in the long run also to...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether efficiency in public service provision is affected by political and budgetary institutions, fiscal capacity, and democratic participation. In order to address this issue we take advantage of a new global efficiency measure for Norwegian local...

Compared with most countries the Norwegian system of financing local governments is highly centralized. Grants make up a substantial part of revenues and local taxes are highly regulated by the center. The development of the system was motivated by a desire to equalize service provision...

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

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

We provide an empirical analysis of regional risk sharing in Norway over the period 1977-90. The approach of Asdrubali, Sørensen and Yosha (1996) is extended to take account of public employment as a possible shock absorber. The other channels of risk sharing are capital markets & commuting,...

The paper provides an analysis of efficiency in the care for the elderly sector in Norway. In a first step we perform DEA analysis to calculate the degree of efficiency in each municipality and the national level efficiency potential. The analysis reveals substantial variation in efficiency...

Cost control in the public sector is a challenge for political institutions. Theoretical research recently has shown incentive effects of property taxation that can work as a mechanism to hold costs down. We are able to investigate the empirical relevance of this proposition, since local...