We study a reform by which a standardized model of choice and competition was introduced in tax-financed home care in a majority of Swedish municipalities. The market for home care is of particular interest since it is close to the ideal quasi-market. For identification, we exploit the different...

The Swedish school system suffers from profound problems with teacher recruitment and retention, knowledge decline, and grade inflation. Absenteeism is high, and psychiatric disorders have risen sharply among Swedish pupils in the last ten years. In this pioneering analysis of the consequences...

We study the political effects of mass emigration to the United States in the 19th century using data from Sweden. To instrument for total emigration over several decades, we exploit severe local frost shocks that sparked an initial wave of emigration, interacted with within-country travel...

Can competition and the existence of profit-seeking actors in the school market improve educational quality? To see cost-efficient, long-term improvements, we identify the school system's capacity for knowledge-enhancing innovation as crucial and explore this question by examining Swedish...

Many countries have implemented quasi-markets to enhance entrepreneurship and innovation in welfare service provision. However, the benefits have generally been limited; this can also be observed in Sweden, a country which stands out for its extensive use of quasi-markets. Based on the Swedish...

In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of political power on the provision of public education. We use data from a historical nondemocratic society with a weighted voting system where eligible voters received votes in proportion to their taxable income and without any limit on the maximum...

This essay argues that the most crucial institution of any school system is its view of knowledge - from which virtually all other aspects of a school are derived: the content of its curricula, its pedagogical practices, and the incentives that motivate its members. To make this case, we outline...

In this paper, we ask under what conditions norms can enhance welfare by mitigating moral hazard in income insurance. We point out a particular role of norms, namely to compensate for insurers' difficulties in monitoring the behavior of insured individuals. Thus, the functioning of social norms...

A recurring theme in evaluations of Swedish residential youth care is that treatment is often unplanned. In this paper, I show that planned treatment is strongly positively associated with treatment outcomes. In the short term, teenagers with planned treatment are less likely to experience a...

The Swedish school system suffers from profound problems with teacher recruitment and retention, knowledge decline, and grade inflation. Absenteeism is high, and psychiatric disorders have risen sharply among Swedish pupils in the last ten years. In this pioneering analysis of the consequences...