A partial adjustment model with endogenous speed of adjustment is developed to analyze how pressure from interest groups and mass media influence the adjustment process of local governments. A survey questionnaire to the local politicians is used to measure the pressure indicators. Based on a...

Cost control in the public sector is a challenge for political institutions. Theoretical research recently has shown incentive effects of property taxation that can work as a mechanism to hold costs down. We are able to investigate the empirical relevance of this proposition, since local...

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)...

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...

This paper provides an empirical test of a principal tenet of fiscal federalism: that spending discretion, when granted to localities, leads to public-sector heterogeneity, with public-good levels adjusting to suit local demands. The test is based on a simple model of partial fiscal...

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 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...

This paper provides an empirical test of a principal tenet of fiscal federalism: that spending discretion, when granted to localities, allows public-good levels to adjust to suit local demands. The test is based on a simple model of partial fiscal decentralization, under which earmarking of...