Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Mårten Blix ◽  
Henrik Jordahl
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Swedish Model ◽  
Demographic Challenges ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Rich

This chapter describes why the Swedish tax-financed service sector is of interest to other countries. While the Swedish welfare state is among the largest in the rich world, most countries face similar policy trade-offs because of rising demands and demographic challenges. It is a challenge for all democracies to achieve cost efficiency without sacrificing quality and fairness. We introduce the main elements of the Swedish model and explain how major reforms in the last decades have turned the country into a giant laboratory from which others can learn. The extensive use of private for-profit firms in tax-financed service provision might surprise many readers. But it is precisely this combination of social ambitions and market forces that has created unique experiences. The chapter introduces the Swedish development and its underlying forces.

Resilient privatization: the puzzling case of for-profit welfare providers in Sweden

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 745-765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Svallfors ◽  
Anna Tyllström
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
For Profit ◽  
The Face ◽  
Organized Action ◽  
Influence Perceptions ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract In this article, we analyse the striking resilience of for-profit care and service provision in what has often been seen as the archetypical social democratic welfare state: Sweden. We focus on the strategic discursive activities of private companies and their business organizations as they try to influence perceptions, organize actors and facilitate communication to defend profit-making in the welfare sector in the face of increasing conflict and opposition. We argue that taking such organized action into account changes dominant perceptions about the characteristics of the Swedish political economy, and carries important lessons for analyses of changes in the organization of the welfare state in general.

The Crisis is Over but Frugality Must Continue: Post-consolidation Fiscal Policy and the Dualisation of the Swedish Model

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-171
Author(s):  
Simone Scarpa
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Swedish Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
Consolidation Phase

Previous research has predominantly analysed the retrenchment of the Swedish welfare state from a long-term perspective, examining restructuring processes from the financial crisis of the early 1990s until recent years. This study instead takes a short-term perspective and focuses on welfare state developments in the post-consolidation phase, after the recovery from the crisis. The aim is to investigate how the fiscal policy reforms introduced during the recovery years forced subsequent governments to continue on the path of "frugality". Specifically, the paper focuses on the effects of austerity politics on two policy domains: income redistribution through the benefit and tax system and the municipalities' role as social service providers and employers. The analysis indicates that the Swedish model is showing increasing signs of dualisation due to the gradual segmentation of prior universalistic welfare programmes and to the worsening of working conditions in the social service sector.

Economics and efficiency

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Abel Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Production Function ◽  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Indifference Curve ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Consumer Theory ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Know How ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Standard Production

This chapter, the longest in the book, explains the fundamentals of microeconomics and its application to the analysis of health and healthcare. The concepts of scarcity and opportunity costs lie at the heart of the economics discipline. Based on the standard production function with two input factors, the important concept of cost-efficiency is explained; and based on the premise of scarcity in the availability of input factors, the concept of opportunity costs is explained. An important insight from consumer theory is that people make trade-offs. Their preferences and income determine their chosen combination of goods, as illustrated by an indifference curve. An important piece of information for policymakers attempting to intervene in people’s demand for healthy, and unhealthy, goods is to know how sensitive demand is to changing prices and income. The chapter explains and defines elasticities of demand.

Profaning the Sacred: The Unorthodox Financial Activities of Catholic Clerics During the Napoleonic Period, 1796–1814

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-542
Author(s):  
Christopher Korten
Keyword(s):  
Precious Metals ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Times ◽  
First Time ◽  
Insight Into

This article reveals for the first time how Catholic clerics survived financially during the Napoleonic period in Italy (1796–1814). Despite the very rich, 200-year historiography on one of the Church's most critical periods, there is almost nothing on how religious clerics coped at this time. Their institutions had been despoiled by the French, often in collaboration with locals, negating traditional forms of clerical income, such as alms or rental income from non-ecclesiastical properties. This caused clerics to search out unorthodox – at times, non-canonical – ways of eking out a living, either for themselves, their religious communities or both, as such distinctions were often blurred. Masses were monetized and traded; ecclesiastical paraphernalia composed of precious metals were smelted and commodified, and relics were sold for profit. The uncovering of these controversial acts by men who in normal times were upstanding reveals the desperation of the times and provides insight into the rich discussion on determining the degrees of separation (and overlap) between the sacred and profane.

Privatizing Welfare Services

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Jordahl ◽  
Mårten Blix
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Elderly Care ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Upper Secondary Education ◽  
Service Production ◽  
The Government

The Swedish welfare state is known for providing extensive services to its citizens. Much less well known is that a fair amount of the services are delivered by private for-profit firms. The first steps of privatization were taken in the mid-1980s for childcare services at the municipal level, and the government often found itself scrambling to introduce regulation afterwards. Other sectors were subsequently privatized, most notably through an extensive voucher scheme to provide choice in compulsory and upper-secondary education. A key question throughout this process has been how to maintain the Swedish egalitarian ethos while undergoing extensive privatization. How has the country managed to reap the benefits from market forces without endangering equitable outcomes? The Swedish system is no middle road between socialism and capitalism. Instead, it is more akin to a large-scale laboratory for institutional design with lessons that should be of broad relevance to other countries aiming to get high-quality welfare services while containing costs. Focusing on what others can learn from Sweden, the book makes accessible original research on schools, health care, and elderly care. The privatization of service production has occurred despite major political controversy between two competing visions for the welfare state. Successful experiments have spread organically to neighbouring municipalities. What was done well in this process and what were the mistakes? The book addresses the fundamental economic challenges, the trends of the future, and the implications for institutional design

scholarly journals Administrative Traditions – and the Problem of the “Trilemma”

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Noralv Veggeland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Integration Policy ◽  
European Welfare State ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Us ◽  
Modern Welfare State ◽  
Political Economic

The purpose of this paper is to show that the administration of a modern welfare state is a complex thing. The statemeets the challenge of the “trilemma”. Social policy formation does fundamentally relay on the outcome of the debateabout the future of the European welfare state. From the perspective of the political-economic approach, social policyformation is a dependent variable to both European integration policy and national administrative traditions. However,the national state does not act in a sovereign manner neither in relation to the European Union (EU) nor to domesticmember actors. All of them confronted with a so-called “trilemma” aspect, a term first introduced by the US socialscientist Torben Iversen (2005). In this paper, I follow up his analysis and shows the difficult choices that confrontspolicy-makers on the different administrative levels because of this trilemma and its trade-offs. New PublicManagement ideas are dominant and for the time being confront the other ruling administrative social traditions ofWestern Europe. In this paper, I conclude that a European agreement on a social choice, related to the overcome oftrilemma, must be accomplished to save the welfare state model as we know it. The traditional Nordic welfare statemodel gives an example.

scholarly journals Agriculture and Supporting Ecosystem Services: A Trade-off Analysis Using Open Data in Brazil

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Dias Turetta ◽  
Bruno Pedrosa ◽  
Luca Eufemia ◽  
Michelle Bonatti ◽  
Stefan Sieber
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Sustainable Land Use ◽  
Production Region ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Agricultural Areas

Open data are important for adding legitimacy and transparency to public sciences. These data have also a potential to be used as a first approach for scientific investigation, such as spatial evaluation of ecosystem services. This paper presents a methodological approach to evaluate the trade-offs between agriculture and supporting ecosystem services based on spatial analysis and open data. The study area is an important agricultural production region in Bahia State, Brazil. The framework was able to establish the spatial interactions between agriculture and ecosystem service provision, while the regional scale was useful in supporting guidelines regarding sustainable land use for agricultural areas.

Constitutional History

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olof Petersson
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Parliamentary Government ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Trade Offs

In one sense, Sweden follows the general pattern of constitution-making. The major shifts in the constitutional history have occurred in the aftermath of great crises. Constitutions have been important as descriptions and justifications of the prevailing forces of power. On the other hand, the constitutions of Sweden have been relatively insignificant as norms regulating political and public life. Constitutions have been important as history writing but relatively unimportant as normative principles shaping society, and, indeed, profound changes such as the introduction of parliamentary government have taken place without constitutional reform. The Swedish welfare state was built upon negotiations and practical trade-offs rather than constitutional arguments.

Using Cases Published in Issues in Accounting Education: Categories and Topics at a Glance

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlys Gascho Lipe
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Accounting Information ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
Accounting Education ◽  
Financial Accounting ◽  
Accounting Information Systems ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Not For Profit

To increase accessibility, cases published in Issues in Accounting Education from its inception through November 2006 are categorized by course area. Course categories include accounting information systems, auditing, financial accounting, managerial/cost accounting, and taxation. Specific course topics addressed in each case are identified. Additional tables list cases addressing ethical issues and cases using governmental or not-for-profit entities and firms in the service sector.

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