A wide range of services provided by the public sector are credence goods, i.e., services for which the producer has private information whether a certain treatment is needed or not. This paper studies how ownership affects the incentives for producers to reveal such information to public...

I develop a model of public sector contracting based on the multitask framework by Holmström and Milgrom (1991). In this model, an agent can put effort into increasing the quality of a service or reducing costs. Being residual claimants, private owners have stronger incentives to cut costs than...

Many countries have undertaken central-bank independence reforms, but the years of implementation differ. What explains such differences in timing? This is of interest more broadly, as it sheds light on factors that matter for the speed at which economic reforms come about. We study a rich set...

What factors determine national differences in the size and industry distribution of employment? This study stresses the role of business taxation, employment security laws, credit market policies, wage-setting institutions and the size of the public sector. We characterize these aspects of the...

Attention is called to a little explored scarce resource, termed 'economic competence', which combines features of human capital and bounded rationality, and causes a singularity in resource-allocation in society. The performance of each economy is shown to strongly depend on how this resource...

In this paper it is argued that the size distribution of firms may largely be determined by institutional factors. This hypothesis is tested in an exploratory fashion by studying the evolution of the size distribution of firms over time in Sweden for a period spanning from teh late 1960s to the...

What factors determine national differences in the size and industry distribution of employment? This study stresses the role of business taxation, employment security laws, credit market policies, wage-setting institutions and the size of the public sector.

In this paper it is argued that the size distribution of firms may largely be determined by institutional factors. This hypothesis is tested in an exploratory fashion by studying the evolution of the size distribution of firms over time in Sweden for a period spanning from the late 1960s to the...

Following a severe contraction in the early 1990s, the Swedish economy accumulated a strong record of output growth coupled with a disappointing performance in the labor market. As of 2005, hours worked per person 20–64 years of age are 10.5 percent below the 1990 peak and a mere one percent...

No abstract.