Government enterprises are vulnerable to political intervention and influence of various interest groups. The theoretical literature emphasizes the role multiple and conflicting goals that distorts incentives and accountability. We offer empirical evidence of the importance of the political...

R<sc>attsø</sc> J. and S<sc>tokke</sc> H. E. Population divergence and income convergence: regional distribution dynamics for Norway, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. Regional population divergence follows from in-migration to cities with high income levels. The dynamic relationship between population and income is...

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...

When investigating the effects of federal grants on the behavior of lower-level governments, it is hard to defend the handling of grants as an exogenous factor affecting local governments; federal governments often set grants based on characteristics and performance of local governments. In this...

Generational conflict affects the supply of public welfare services, and the rising share of elderly is seen as a threat to educational spending. We offer an analysis of spending in child care, primary and lower secondary education, and care for the elderly related to the size of young and old...

The existence of agglomeration economies is well established. We study dynamic agglomeration effects and expect regional income divergence when people move from the periphery to cities. We use distribution analysis, Kernel density functions and first order Markov chains, to investigate whether...

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...

The barrier model of productivity growth suggests that individual country productivity is related to the world technology frontier disturbed by national barriers. We offer a country study of the barrier model exploiting the dramatic changes in the linkages to the world economy in South Africa....

The analysis of the effect of tariffs for labor productivity faces the challenge of tariff policy endogeneity. Tariff policy is designed to promote economic development and the industrial sector tariff structure may reflect characteristics of the industries protected. We seek to identify the...