Privatization and Quality: Evidence from Elderly Care in Sweden

Arbeitspapier

Many quality dimensions are hard to contract upon and are at risk of degradation when services are procured rather than produced in-house. However, procurement may foster performance-improving innovation. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden between 1990 and 2009, including survival rates - our measure of non-contractible quality - and subjectively perceived quality of service. We estimate how procurement from private providers affects these measures using a difference-in-difference approach. The results indicate that procurement significantly increases non-contractible quality as measured by survival rate, reduces the cost per resident but does not affect subjectively perceived quality.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SITE Working Paper ; No. 19

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; National Government Expenditures and Related Policies: Procurement ; Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health ; Comparison of Public and Private Enterprises and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
• Subject: elderly care ; incomplete contracts ; limited enforcement ; mortality ; non-contractible quality ; outsourcing ; nursing homes ; performance measurement ; perceived quality ; privatization ; procurement

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Spagnolo, Giancarlo ; Bergman, Mats A. ; Lundberg, Sofia
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE)
• (where): Stockholm
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/204730
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET