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There is widespread and long-lasting worry related to the condition of public purpose buildings and public investments. Public buildings make up a huge capital stock and proper maintenance and investments are important for public policy. Notwithstanding, the relevant research literature is fragmented and spread across several fields. The authors take stock of earlier and more recent research and suggest some ideas for future research.

The authors summarize the relevant literature and discuss implications of various theoretical assumptions and empirical findings for maintenance and investment strategies.

A better understanding of the role of public facilities in public service provision is important. Relevant topics for further research are the impact of technological changes, both in buildings and service provision, economic issues including macroeconomic shocks and trends that influence public funding and demand for public services, and advancing maintenance scheduling models to consider a portfolio of facilities. Further, the empirical literature suffers from a lack of relevant data to gauge both the condition of public facilities and their impact on public services.

There is widespread worry that poor facilities adversely impact public services, but the size and significance of this impact are an open question. This paper contributes by taking stock of the existing research on public facilities, maintenance, and investments, and suggest ideas for further work.

Although Norway is an affluent country, there is widespread and long-lasting worry related to the condition of public purpose buildings. The purpose of this paper is to study how the condition of local public purpose buildings affect citizen satisfaction with local public services in Norwegian local governments, using data from two Norwegian survey data sets.

This paper investigates how the conditions of local public purpose buildings affect residents’ satisfaction with local public services, using data from two Norwegian survey data sets. The data is analyzed using regression analysis.

This paper finds a significantly positive relationship between building conditions and overall satisfaction with local public services, kindergartens and schools. This paper finds no such relationship between building conditions and satisfaction with nursing homes. This paper quantifies the average expected impact on public service satisfaction from a hypothetical one unit improvement in building conditions, as measured on the building condition scale, and discuss this impact in the context of expenditure on public services.

There is widespread worry that poor facilities adversely impact public services, but the size and significance of this impact are open questions. This paper contributes by offering new insights into the relationship between the condition of public buildings and provision of public services. The results indicate how the state of public facilities should be considered a part of the production function for public services.

In light of evidence of low levels of maintenance of public buildings, this paper aims to investigate trends and determinants of public building conditions in Norwegian local governments.

The authors consider data from surveys and public records in regression analyses.

On average, the condition of Norwegian local public facilities has improved slightly in the period 2004-2016. The survey data suggest substantial fluctuations in building conditions and a negative relationship between building conditions in 2004 and 2016. Local governments with poor building conditions in 2004 had higher investment in the following years. The authors find no systematic relationship between the conditions in 2004 and maintenance expenditures in subsequent years. They conclude that if maintenance levels are too low, the results suggest that investment levels are too high. Further, they find that both political and fiscal factors are important in explaining building conditions.

The authors provide insight into determinants and trends of building conditions in Norwegian local governments. The results hint at an unhealthy balance between maintenance spending and public investments.

Describe the trends in investments in the water, sewage and waste disposal sector (WSD) in Norwegian local governments and search for determinants that can explain variations in investment levels across local governments. The water, sewage and WSD is the second most important sector in Norwegian local governments in terms of the share of total investments and is subject to much debate due to aging pipelines in many communities. However, as pipelines are hidden in the ground, this is also a sector that can easily be forgotten until an actual failure in the system occurs.

The authors analyze a large data set of all Norwegian local governments in the period 2003–2018 using descriptive statistics and regression techniques.

The investment levels are driven by need, in terms of expectations of a growing population, and fiscal capacity. Hence, the authors conclude that the investment decisions seem to be mostly based on reasonably rational evaluations of the local governments' future needs and capacity to pay for investments.

The paper contributes to the literature on determinants of public capital expenditures. An important part of this debate is whether differences in expenditure levels reflect rational decisions based on changes in need and fiscal capacity or shortsighted policy decisions.

This paper aims to investigate which concerns are most important for local government facility managers in Norway.

The authors analyze a survey dataset covering about two-thirds of all Norwegian local governments and 80 per cent of the Norwegian population. The authors consider both descriptive statistics and results from an ordered probit regression analysis.

Facility managers are most concerned about weak fiscal conditions and lack of political priority of facility management, and local governments reporting public buildings in good condition generally have fewer and less serious concerns. Further, managers in municipalities with a solid fiscal balance are less concerned both about how tight fiscal conditions and lack of political prioritization affect facility management. Managers in municipalities with a centralized facility management structure are less concerned that the organizational structure of the facility management is sub-optimal. Finally, managers in populous municipalities have less concern about tight fiscal conditions, organizational structure and recruitment issues.

The paper offers insights on which concerns are most important among local government facility managers and how these concerns vary with local government characteristics. These insights are valuable in the ongoing debate over best facility management practice and in facility management policy work.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the central government can use well-known game-theoretical concepts in order to stimulate provision of local public facilities.

The authors use the classical adverse selection framework to discuss how the central government can use investment transfers as efficiently as possible to stimulate increased provision of local public facilities.

The benefits of local public facilities, such as kindergartens, schools, and primary healthcare institutions are greater than what each local government takes into account. Consequently, the central government, which maximizes social welfare in total, wants more local public facilities than the individual local government find optimal to supply. The central government thus would want to stimulate additional provision of local public facilities using contracts where local governments receive a transfer as compensation for increasing their supply. Since local governments differ regarding their efficiency in supplying facilities, the required amount of facilities and the corresponding transfer size should be allowed to vary across local governments.

Almost all countries are organized with multiple tiers of government, and local governments are important providers of many important welfare services. After labor, facilities are probably the second most important input in production of local public services. This paper offers insights into how the central government can efficiently stimulate the production of local public facilities.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the relationship between maintenance of existent and investment in new infrastructure in Norwegian local governments.

A reduced form vector autoregressive system is estimated using a 29-year-long panel data set for the Norwegian local governments.

The data reveal that increased investment in new infrastructure sparks little, if any, increase in maintenance. The results also indicate that increased maintenance expenditures spark new investments. Because more investments mean more infrastructure and adequate maintenance should give that investments are not caused by maintenance, the results suggest that the local governments have not optimized their maintenance scheduling in this period.

Even though maintenance and investment are large expenditures that both serve as inputs to the stock of infrastructure, little is known about the relationship between the two. The findings in this paper suggests that Norwegian local governments have not planned their maintenance and investments well in the past, and this can be part of the explanation as to why local public infrastructure in Norway is presently in poor condition.

This paper aims to investigate preferences for office spaces among academic staff at a university. The authors consider differences across age groups, seniority, position type and current office situation.

This paper is an empirical investigation of survey data using descriptive statistics and regression analyses. The sample consists of 485 academic employees at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Staff in individual offices are substantially more satisfied with their office space than those who share office space. Moreover, those in large offices are more satisfied than those in smaller. Large offices are occupied by staff with high seniority, and staff with large offices tend to host meetings more frequently than their colleagues. However, it is not clear whether differences in office spacing reflect real needs or mostly status.

Understanding which office spaces that stimulate the best research and higher education is of great importance when policy makers plan resource allocation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between student satisfaction with school facilities and exam results.

The authors combined exam results in Norwegian lower secondary schools with results from a nationwide, mandatory and annual survey that measures student satisfaction over a five-year period. The data were analyzed using regression methods (ordinary least squares and fixed-effects estimation).

The authors found a modest, yet significant, relationship between satisfaction with school facilities and exam results. This is in contrast to earlier studies using Norwegian data, which indicate no such relationship. The authors argue that the difference is probably due to the fact that they have richer data than what were available to the earlier studies of Norwegian schools, and that they used a direct measure of student satisfaction rather than formal and technical measures of facility conditions.

This paper offers new evidence of the relationship between school facilities and student achievement and should be of great interest to academics, school leaders and policy makers.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the decision to postpone maintenance expenditures in regional governments using a game-theoretical approach and investigate whether there may be rational reasons for regional governments to carry a maintenance backlog.

A theoretical political economy model, originally used to explain fiscal deficits in regional governments, is revisited and used to explain maintenance backlogs.

It can be fully rational for regional governments to carry maintenance backlogs, given that they expect the central government to “bail out” this backlog, e.g. through an extra grant earmarked for upgrading of facilities. Hence, a balanced budget regulation (BBR) demanding fiscal balance in regional governments is not sufficient to avoid bailouts. The results suggest that the central government should consider including maintenance of facilities in formal BBRs.

The paper is relevant for policy makers, as it can give guidance with respect to the design of BBRs. The paper illustrates that regulations that only take fiscal balance into account are too narrow to secure that bailouts are avoided. The reason is that regional governments can strategically use maintenance backlogs to generate bailouts even when regional government borrowing is abolished. To avoid this, the central government could make the regulations more extensive, and also include demands regarding maintenance in the regulations.