The large variation in revenues among Norwegian local governments can partly be explained by revenues collected from hydropower production. This revenue variation, combined with good data availability, can be used to extend the literature on the re- source curse in two directions. First, to...

The purpose of the paper is to empirically investigate the determinants of maintenance spending and building conditions in Norwegian local governments. In the popular debate there is a concern that low levels of maintenance spending leads to poor building conditions, and in the long run also to...

Capitalization of the property tax is of particular interest in Norway since many local governments decide not to have a property tax. We apply a rich data set of housing transactions and characteristics for three years (1997–1999) and combine them with local government-level data about...

Vertical fiscal imbalance, decentralized responsibility of spending with centralized financing, creates a common pool problem with spending pressure towards central funds. A model of decentralized government spending under vertical fiscal imbalance is developed, and the importance of national...

Governments struggle with rising service spending, and user charges represent a possible incentive mechanism to control costs. This paper investigates the relationships between costs and user charges in the sewage industry in Norwegian local governments. The analysis addresses the following...

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...