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 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...

The tax structure is important for the income distribution and therefore a key playground for redistributive politics. The standard theory assumes that more unequal income distribution will create a majority for more redistribution (Meltzer and Richard). This study investigates the empirical...

The paper investigates the relationships between costs and user charges in the sewage industry in Norwegian local governments. The purpose of the analysis is to answer the following questions: (i) To what extent is a higher unit cost passed on to consumers in terms of a higher user charge? (ii)...

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...