En analyse av kommunenes hjelp til mottakere av hjemmetjenester

Formålet med denne rapporten er å forklare variasjoner i kommunenes hjelp til mottakere av hjemmetjenester. Analysen er basert på omfattende statistisk informasjon på individnivå som er rapportert inn fra 54 kommuner og bydeler gjennom et system kalt GERIX. Disse dataene brukes til å estimere en empirisk modell for det kommunale tilbudet av direkte hjelp målt i timer per uke til individuelle mottakere. Modellen er avledet fra en teori der tilbudet av hjelp avhenger av kjennetegn ved mottakerne og de økonomiske rammebetingelsene til kommunen

Inntektssystemet for kommunene : Måling av utgiftsbehov og fordelingsvirkninger

Inntektssystemet er et statlig opplegg for å fordele rammetilskudd mellom kommunene. Et viktig siktemål for inntektssystemet er å utjevne de økonomiske forutsetningene for et likeverdig tjenestetilbud. Formålet med denne rapporten er å drøfte hvor godt målet om likeverdig tjenestetilbud blir ivaretatt gjennom fordelingen av rammetilskudd, blant annet ved å sammenlikne med alternativer til foreliggende praksis

The Impact of Local Public Services and Geographical Cost of Living Differences on Poverty Estimates

Despite a broad consensus on the need to take into account the value of public services and geographical cost of living differences when measuring poverty, there is little reliable evidence on how these factors actually affect poverty estimates. Unlike the standard approach in studies of the distribution of public services, this paper employs a method for valuing sector-specific local public services that allows for differences between municipalities in unit costs for providing public services. Furthermore, recipient frequencies in various demographic groups are used as the basis for determining the allocation of the value of these services on citizens of the municipalities. Geographical differences in living costs are taken into account by using municipal housing price indices or by replacing the country-specific poverty line with municipal-specific poverty lines. Applying Norwegian register data for the period 1993-2001, we find that disregarding the value of local public services and geographical cost of living differences yields a misleading picture of poverty.geographical cost of living differences, in-kind transfers, public services, poverty, housing price indices, municipal-specific poverty lines

On the simultaneous determination of current expenditure, real capital, fee income, and public debt in Norwegian local government

An extended community preference model including real and financial investments is estimated on accounting time-series data for the local public sector in Norway. The estimation results indicate considerable sluggishness in local public spending, both in current expenditure and investment spending. A positive shift in grants or taxes will in the short run lead to reductions in the net debt, due to the sluggish spending adjustment. But as spending adjustments take place, the effect on the net debt is reversed, so the long run effect is positive. The long run elasticities of factor demand and net debt with respect to exogeneous income constraints do not differ significantly from unity. The estimated price elasticities suggest that factor demand is close to neutral-elastic in the long run. Higher factor prices involve higher production costs, and local authorities are thus induced to increase user charges.Ministry of Local Government and LabourpublishedVersio

Long-term effects of school spending. Evidence from exiting cohort size variation

This paper investigates the long-term effects of local government education spending on child outcomes, including income, educational attainment, and family formation in adulthood. We propose a novel identification strategy which exploits quasirandom variation in demographic trends when there is strong inertia in local government spending on compulsory schooling. Specifically, size of the exiting cohort that finishes compulsory schooling just before entry of the treated cohort is used as a source of exogenous variation. First, we show that exiting cohort size displays a significantly positive effect on per-pupil spending during school years of the treated cohort. Second, we argue that causal effects of school spending can be identified by utilizing exiting cohort size to instrument for school spending. In implementing this strategy, school spending is found to exhibit sizable and significant effects on income in adulthood for boys, with estimates that are relatively large for children from low- and middle-income families. By comparison, the effects of education spending are small and insignificant for girls.Financial support from the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government is gratefully acknowledged

The Distributional Impact of Public Services When Needs Differ

Despite a broad consensus on the need to take into account the value of public services in distributional analysis, there is little reliable evidence on how the inclusion of such non-cash income actually affects poverty and inequality estimates. In particular, the equivalence scales applied to cash income are not necessarily appropriate when including non-cash income, because the receipt of public services is likely to be associated with particular needs. In this paper, we propose a theory-based framework designed to provide a coherent evaluation of the distributional impact of local public services. The valuation of public services, identification of target groups, allocation of expenditures to target groups, and adjustment for differences in needs are derived from a model of local government spending behaviour. Using Norwegian data from municipal accounts and administrative registers we find that the inclusion of non-cash income reduces income inequality by about 15 percent and poverty rates by almost one-third. However, adjusting for differences in needs for public services across population subgroups offsets about half the inequality reduction and some of the poverty decrease.income distribution, poverty, public services, non-cash income, needs adjustment, equivalence scales

Dynamic Causal Forests, with an Application to Payroll Tax Incidence in Norway

This paper develops a machine-learning method that allows researchers to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects with panel data in a setting with many covariates. Our method, which we name the dynamic causal forest (DCF) method, extends the causal-forest method of Wager and Athey (2018) by allowing for the estimation of dynamic treatment effects in a difference-in-difference setting. Regular causal forests require conditional independence to consistently estimate heterogeneous treatment effects. In contrast, DCFs provide a consistent estimate for heterogeneous treatment effects under the weaker assumption of parallel trends. DCFs can be used to create event-study plots which aid in the inspection of pre-trends and treatment effect dynamics. We provide an empirical application, where DCFs are applied to estimate the incidence of payroll tax on wages paid to employees. We consider treatment effect heterogeneity associated with personal- and firm-level variables. We find that on average the incidence of the tax is shifted onto workers through incidental payments, rather than contracted wages. Heterogeneity is mainly explained by firm-and workforce-level variables. Firms with a large and heterogeneous workforce are most effective in passing on the incidence of the tax to workers

A european equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers

This paper introduces a theory-based equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers, which justifies comparison of distributions of extended income (cash income plus the value of public services) between European countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed equivalence scale in an empirical analysis of the effects of public health care, long-term care, education and childcare expenditure on estimates of income inequality and poverty for 24 European countries. The empirical results show significant effects of public in-kind transfers on the level of income inequality and poverty for all countries. Over the period 2006–2018, inequality and poverty estimates display rather different trends across European countries.This work has been supported by the second Network for the analysis of EU-SILC (Net-SILC2) coordinated by CEPS/INSTEAD (Luxembourg). Financial support from Eurostat, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, and the Norwegian Research Council (grant number 261985) is gratefully acknowledged

Fiscal and spending behavior of local governments : an empirical analysis based on Norwegian data

This paper treats local governments as utility maximizing agents when they allocate resources among different service sectors. We present estimates for eight service sectors, based on a modified version of the extended linear expenditure system (ELES) and using observations at the municipal level for Norway. Our econometric model recognizes user fees and budget deficits as endogenous variables. Moreover, the model accounts for heterogeneity in local tastes and production costs. Price information for local public services is not available in the data. However, by allowing for heterogeneity in the marginal budget share parameters, we achieve identification of the complete ELES. The empirical results show that local public services are in general price-inelastic. Welfare services like education, social services and care for the elderly and disabled are income-inelastic, while infrastructure is rather income-elastic. A strong flypaper effect is revealed by the response of user fees to income changes. Finally, results from out-of-sample predictions show that the ELES model is able to simulate local government behavior quite well. Keywords: Local public finance, local government spending, extended linear expenditure syste