Schools and public buildings in decay: the role of political fragmentation

Lars-Erik Borge () and Arnt O. Hopland ()
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Arnt O. Hopland: Norwegian School of Economics

Economics of Governance, 2017, vol. 18, issue 1, No 4, 85-105

Abstract: Abstract It is a widespread concern that schools and other public buildings are in poor conditions. A popular explanation is that maintenance is given too little priority in the budgetary process because politicians are shortsighted. In this paper we investigate this hypothesis using two novel survey data sets on school and general building conditions in Norwegian local governments. We use political fragmentation as a proxy for myopic behavior and provide strong empirical evidence that a high degree of political fragmentation is associated with poor building conditions, both for schools and for buildings in general. The finding is robust to handling of controls, outliers, and estimation method. We also provide evidence that lack of maintenance is the channel for poor building conditions.

Keywords: School building conditions; Political fragmentation; Shortsighted policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H72 H82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10101-016-0187-z

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