Many developed countries currently consider a move towards a universal child care program. The challenge in assessing the case for universal child care programs is that the evidence base is scarce. We analyze the staged expansion of subsidized, universally accessible child care in Norway. Our...

Most nations spend a considerable part of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. However, no previous study has addressed the productivity and efficiency of the core area of the armed forces, operational units, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Introducing a model for the production...

The distinction between the concepts outputs and outcomes can be made operational based on the consideration of the degree of control a public service producer has over its production activity. Resources are transformed into service outputs under the control of the organisation in question,...

The distinction between the concepts outputs and outcomes can be made operational based on the consideration of the degree of control a public service producer has over its production activity. Resources are transformed into service outputs under the control of the organisation in question,...

The ability of public sector policy makers to prioritize has a huge impact on the effectiveness of public service provision. Public services can take the form of final outputs demanded by consumers or of intermediate outputs contributing to a process of realizing the higher goals of society. In...

Theory and evidence point towards particularly positive effects of high-quality child care for disadvantaged children. At the same time, disadvantaged families often sort out of existing programs. To counter differences in learning outcomes between children from different socioeconomic...

There is a heated debate in the US, Canada and many European countries about introducing universally accessible child care. However, studies on universal child care and child development are scarce and only consider short-run outcomes. We analyze the introduction of universal child care in...

We identify exogenous variation in incumbent policymakers' re-election probabilities and explore empirically how this variation affects the incumbents' investment in physical capital. Our results indicate that a higher re-election probability leads to higher investments, particularly in the...

The strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross-country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades. We analyze the...