Competition, Quality and Favouritism in Public Service Provision

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http://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/project.jsf?pid=project:1710

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Project

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Title [sv]

Konkurrens, kvalitet och favorisering i offentlig upphandling och produktion

Title [en]

Competition, Quality and Favouritism in Public Service Provision

Abstract [sv]

This project aims to analyze aspects of the provision of public services, from a theoretical and empirical point of view, in order to identify policy prescriptions for the Swedish/European procurement system to increase efficiency and welfare. We compare in-house provision, traditional procurement and, if applicable, voucher systems, with empirical applications to care of elderly and cleaning services. A main focus is hard-to-quantify quality, which is highly important in care of elderly but less so in cleaning. Procurement results in strong ex-ante competition in measurable dimensions; voucher systems give better ex-post competition in quality dimensions; in-house production gives more control. Recent legal reforms emphasize transparency in procurement, giving procurers less scope to rely on reputation, past performance and other soft criteria. We will use quality indicators at the establishment level collected by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), public age-specific mortality data at municipality level and data on the model of provision collect by ourselves to empirically assess quality in care of elderly. We will extend Lundberg’s existing dataset on cleaning procurement, which pre-dates reforms of the Public Procurement Act, to the post-reform period. The extended dataset will allow us to assess the impact of the reforms and to test two rival explanations for selection of non-low bidders as the winner: favouristism and quality preferences.

Principal InvestigatorBergman, Mats Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, Economics (Closed down 2012-12-31)
Co-InvestigatorLundberg, Sofia
Co-InvestigatorSpagnolo, Giancarlo

Coordinating organisation

Södertörn University

Funder

Vetenskapsrådet

Period

2009-01-01 － 2011-12-31

Identifiers

DiVA, id: project:1710Project, id: 2008-02011_VR

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