Sweden has undertaken major national reforms of its school sector, which, consequently, has been classified as one of the most decentralized ones in the OECD. This paper investigates whether local tax base, grants, and preferences affected local school resources differently as decentralization...

In this paper we investigate the demand for local public school expenditures in Sweden using survey data, a method previously never applied to Swedish data. We compare our results to those of earlier US studies, where the same method is used in a different institutional setup. Estimating a...

We apply the regression kink design to the Swedish grant system and estimate causal effects of intergovernmental grants on local public employment. Our robust conclusion is that grants do not stimulate local public employment. We find no statistically significant effects on total local public...

Exploiting the exogenous variation in user fees caused by a Swedish childcare reform, we are able to identify the causal effect of childcare costs on fertility in a context in which childcare enrollment is almost universal, user fees are low, and labor force participation of mothers is very...

Do governments increase public employment in election years? This article answers this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. These facts make it possible for us to...

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. Federal governments often set grants based on characteristics and performance of decentralized governments. In this paper we make use...

Exploiting exogenous variation in childcare prices stemming from a childcare price reform, this paper estimates effects of reductions in childcare costs on female labour supply. The reform introduced a cap on childcare prices, and lead to considerable reductions in prices depending on family...

This paper investigates political representation by exploring the relationship between citizens' preferences and the preferences of their elected representatives. Using Swedish survey data, the empirical analysis shows that voters and politicians have significantly different preferences for...