Educated politicians and government efficiency: Evidence from Norwegian local government

The paper studies the effect of politicians' education levels on government efficiency. Using data on Norwegian local government, the paper measures efficiency by DEA-productivity indicators and comprehensive indicators of service production. The identification of causal effects exploits close (within-list) elections to design an instrumental variable for council shares with higher education. Consistent with survey data, the estimates show that better-educated politicians in-duce higher levels of efficiency, particularly for old-age care services. A similar empirical strategy indicates that political experience has small efficiency effects. Educational mis-representation has modest effects on fiscal allocations and is mostly canceled out by the efficiency gains.(c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.