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Between centralized and decentralized welfare policy: Have national guidelines constrained the influence of local preferences?

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  • Lunder, Trond Erik

Abstract

Decentralized welfare services allow more flexibility toward individual needs assessment, but may also have negative consequences such as welfare competition or lack of equity between regions. Does national standardization require full centralization of individual assessment, or can a set of unbinding national guidelines reduce unwanted variation between regions? The case of this article is a national benefit norm for municipal social assistance payments issued by the Norwegian central government in 2001. A large share of municipalities changed their local norms to match the national norm in the following years, but data show that local benefit norms are uncorrelated with the actual payments. The apparent compliance to national guidelines does not translate into actual welfare generosity.

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  • Lunder, Trond Erik, 2016. "Between centralized and decentralized welfare policy: Have national guidelines constrained the influence of local preferences?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 1-13.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:41:y:2016:i:c:p:1-13
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.11.003
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Welfare benefits; Policy implementation; National guidelines; Fiscal federalism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

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