Local public services and migration: educational change evidence from Norwegian municipalities.

Abstract

"We take advantage of a large panel data base covering most Norwegian municipalities during seven years to examine the relationship between local public services and migration to and from municipalities for different age groups. The main innovation of the paper is that we use a survey data set to verify that the input measures employed as explanatory variables in the migration study actually are related to citizen satisfaction with local public services. We find that the results depend crucially on whether the input measures are instrumented. When input measures are instrumented, we find few effects of local public services on migration."