Politiske og institusjonelle trekk: En kvantitativ studie av norske kommuners budsjettbalanse
Master thesis
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Date
2021-07-02Metadata
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- Master theses [117]
Abstract
This thesis examines what political and institutional factors effect municipalities fiscal balance. Previous research in this field has tended to investigate single phenomenon’s effect on fiscal balance. This thesis aims to take a broader view and investigate what effects persist when controlling for the other explanations on fiscal balance that has been used in earlier research. By doing this, the study will uncover what phenomenon can explain the variation observed in the fiscal balance in Norwegian municipalities. It will also present one new explanation that can explain variations in the fiscal balance and a new way of measuring political fragmentation using the executive council found in most Norwegian municipalities. To investigate what political and institutional factors effect municipalities fiscal balance, the study constructs an original dataset linking municipalities economic, demographic, political and institutional variables together using a variety of different datasets. Because the institutional variables have a high amount of missing values, imputation will be used to improve the amount of data that is available. This dataset then covers 424 municipalities from 2001-2016 and is analysed using time-series cross-sectional methods. In line with previous research, this thesis finds that balanced budget rules through ROBEK has a strong positive significant and robust impact on the fiscal balance of the municipalities. Furthermore, this study finds that cooperation between parties seems to diminish the effect of political fragmentation in line with the findings from one qualitative study, although this finding is not as strong as the previous and weakens some, when influential cases are removed and the models are estimated again. However, this study can’t seem to find an effect from political fragmentation and budget institutions like some of the previous studies in this field have found.