A Machine Learning Analysis of the Recent Environmental and Resource Economics Literature

We use topic modeling to study research articles in environmental and resource economics journals in the period 2000–2019. Topic modeling based on machine learning allows us to identify and track latent topics in the literature over time and across journals, and further to study the role of different journals in different topics and the changing emphasis on topics in different journals. The most prevalent topics in environmental and resource economics research in this period are growth and sustainable development and theory and methodology. Topics on climate change and energy economics have emerged with the strongest upward trends. When we look at our results across journals, we see that journals have different topical profiles and that many topics mainly appear in one or a few selected journals. Further investigation reveal latent semantic structures across research themes that only the insider would be aware.

     

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

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.     

Central government control and fiscal adjustment: Norwegian evidence

Norwegian local governments that violate the balanced budget rule are placed in a register. The consequence of being in the register is that the budget and resolutions to raise new loans must be approved by the county governor, the central government’s representative in the county. Local governments in the register are subject to stronger central government control and must tighten their budgetary policy in order to be removed from the register. The findings suggest that local governments in the register improve their operating surplus, mainly due to cost reductions.