International trade may influence income distribution. This study takes as a starting point the puzzling development of relative wages between skilled and unskilled labor in South Africa. Wage inequality decreased during the sanctions period and increased with trade liberalization post...

Reform offers economic gains for society at large, but can represent a threat to the interests of public employees. Public sector reform faces opposition from voters employed in public sector. Norwegian data allow for an analysis this interpretation. Survey data show that public employees prefer...

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...

We use surveys in which respondents evaluate local amenities in Norway to compute proxy variables for the quality of local public services as well as other local amenities relevant to location decisions. Average satisfaction reported by the respondents is computed for each amenity and each...

Local redistribution policy creates incentives for welfare migration that may result in 'underprovision' or even a 'race to the bottom'. This paper evaluates the empirical importance of welfare competition. Our contribution is to separate between the policy decision and the actual welfare...