There are several theoretical accounts of public sector outsourcing. We note that leading theories give different predictions of the influence of political variables and test the predictions on a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time as well as between...

We present and test a theory of prospective and retrospective pocketbook voting. Focusing on two large reforms in Sweden, we establish a causal chain from policies to sizeable individual gains and losses and then to voting. The Social Democrats proposed budget cuts affecting parents with young...

In a recent paper, García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez (2005) apply the generalized IV model of Hausman and Taylor to estimate education returns of wage earners and the self-employed in Portugal and in Spain. Our examination reveals several problems which relate to the validity and documentation...

Political candidates on the right are more beautiful or are seen as more competent than candidates on the left in Australia, Finland, France, and the United States. This appearance gap gives candidates on the right an advantage in elections, which could in turn influence policy outcomes. As an...

Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in U.S. elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced individuals. Taken together, this suggests that babyfaced political candidates are perceived as less...

We survey the literature on the effects of public sector outsourcing. Guided by theory, we systematically arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. Taken as a whole, the empirical literature indicates that public sector outsourcing generally reduces...

We present and test a theory of prospective and retrospective pocketbook voting. Focusing on two large reforms in Sweden, we establish a causal chain from policies to sizeable individual gains and losses and then to voting. The Social Democrats proposed budget cuts affecting parents with young...

While studies of the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth have shown it to be positive, significant and robust, it has rightly been argued that different areas of economic freedom may have quite different effects on growth. Along that line, Carlsson and Lundström (2002)...

We use the 1952 Swedish municipal amalgamation reform to study free-riding and the common pool problem in politics. We expect municipalities that were affected by the reform to increase their debt in anticipation of a merger, and this effect to be larger if they were merged with many other...

We present new evidence on the influence of income inequality on generalized trust. Using individual panel data from Swedish counties together with an instrumental variable strategy we find that differences in disposable income, and especially differences among people in the bottom half of the...