The use of intergovernmental grants in educational policies may give rise to a conflict between gains attributable to local flexibility and the central government’s intention to narrow gaps in school spending and resource use across local jurisdictions. This paper estimates the impact on school resources of a Norwegian central government grant intended to decrease the student-teacher ratio in primary school (grades 1–4). The grant was given to the 100 municipalities with the highest student-teacher ratios out of more than 400 municipalities. Using a difference-in-differences approach, our results show that Norwegian municipalities did not increase teacher density in primary schools, despite receiving extra grants for this purpose. Though we cannot rule out that there was some take-up of our grant, we can exclude full take up. Our results suggest that strong enforcement mechanisms may be necessary for earmarked grants to affect local allocation of resources as intended by central governments, although this might come at the cost of reducing local flexibility.

在教育政策中使用政府间拨款可能会导致地方灵活性带来的收益与中央政府缩小地方辖区学校支出和资源使用差距的意图之间的冲突。本文估计了旨在降低小学（1-4 年级）师生比例的挪威中央政府拨款对学校资源的影响。这笔赠款发放给了 400 多个城市中师生比例最高的 100 个城市。使用差异中的差异方法，我们的结果表明，尽管为此目的获得了额外的赠款，挪威市政当局并没有增加小学教师的密度。虽然我们不能排除我们的赠款被占用，但我们可以排除全部占用。