IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nst/samfok/18420.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of central government grants on local educational policy

Author

Listed:
  • Rune Borgan Reiling

    (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU))

  • Kari Vea Salvanes

    (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU))

  • Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør

    (Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU))

  • Bjarne Strøm

    (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

The use of intergovernmental grants in educational policies may give rise to a conflict between gains attributable to local flexibility and central government’s intention to narrow gaps in school spending and resource use across local jurisdictions. This paper estimates the impact on school resources of a Norwegian central government grant intended to decrease the student-teacher ratio (group size) in primary school (grades 1-4). The grant was given to the 100 municipalities with the highest student-teacher ratio out of more than 400 municipalities. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the grant did not have the intended effect of reducing the actual group size. Our results suggest that strong enforcement mechanisms are necessary for earmarked grants to affect local allocation of resources as intended by central governments, although this may come at the cost of reducing local flexibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Rune Borgan Reiling & Kari Vea Salvanes & Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør & Bjarne Strøm, 2020. "The effect of central government grants on local educational policy," Working Paper Series 18420, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    • Handle: RePEc:nst:samfok:18420
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iso/WP/2020/2_20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Central government grants; school policy; teacher density;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nst:samfok:18420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anne Larsen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isontno.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.