Why is competition between institutions usually viewed in a negative light, when competition is considered positive in most other economic contexts? The contributors to this volume introduce new perspectives on this issue, analytically and empirically exploring reasons for this perception.

This book tackles a number of controversial questions regarding Sweden’s economic and political development: • How did Sweden become rich? • How did Sweden become egalitarian? • Why has Sweden since the early 1990s grown faster than the US and most EU-countries despite its high taxes and...

Why is competition between institutions usually viewed in a negative light, when competition is considered positive in most other economic contexts? The contributors to this volume introduce new perspectives on this issue, analytically and empirically exploring reasons for this perception.

This paper examines the redistributive effect of upper benefit limits (“ceilings”) in short term Bismarckian social insurance. Using data describing the Swedish sickness benefit we show that ceilings create a small redistribution at fairly high costs in terms of total utility and political...

We develop a model of higher education to analyze the effects of elite institutions on individual educational decisions and aggregate labor market outcomes. Elite institutions allow the most talented of a given population to separate themselves from the larger pool of agents enrolled in higher...

In 1980, Sweden was a highly regulated economy with several state monopolies and low levels of economic freedom. Less than 20 years later, liberal reforms have turned Sweden into one of the worlds most open economies with a remarkable increase in economic freedom. While taxes and expenditure...

Several recent studies have found a negative relation between government size and economic growth in rich countries. Since countries with big government have experienced above average improvements in both the Economic freedom index and the KOF globalization index, we argue that existing studies...

Private universities, as opposed to publicly financed ones, are dominant in some countries and almost non-existent in others. We develop a dynamic model to demonstrate that private providers emerge as soon as they can profitably sell an elite signal to the most highly talented. As private...

We analyze a cooperation game and a coordination game in an evolutionary environment. Agents make noisy observations of opponent's propensity to play dove, called reputation, and form preferences over opponents based on their reputation. A game takes place when two agents agree to play. Socially...

We analyze a cooperation game in an evolutionary environment. Agents make noisy observations of opponents’ propensity to cooperate, called reputation, and form preferences over opponents based on their reputation. A game takes place when two agents agree to play. Pareto optimal cooperation is...