IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v110y2002i3-4p305-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Central-Local Government Relations in Transition: The Case of Swedish Child Care

Author

Listed:
  • Gustafsson, Bjorn
  • Kjulin, Urban
  • Schwarz, Brita

Abstract

The provision of subsidized child care has grown to become a sizeable economic activity in Sweden during recent decades. This paper examines the changed financial relation between central and local governments and the impact of child-care grants on local government behaviour. We find that during an earlier regime, with a system of matching grants, local governments responded strongly to the incentives of the rules. This resulted in both intended and unintended outcomes, as well as a distortion of information to the central government. Experiences from a recent transition of regime towards a kind of closed block grant system, illustrates new types of adaptive behaviour but also the problem of finding a formula for a fair allocation of resources among local governments. When designing a block grant system a distinction must be made between expenditures and resource needs; cost expenditure data do not necessarily reflect resource needs in cases where there are national categorical equity goals related to social services of a merit-want character. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Gustafsson, Bjorn & Kjulin, Urban & Schwarz, Brita, 2002. "Central-Local Government Relations in Transition: The Case of Swedish Child Care," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 110(3-4), pages 305-325, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:110:y:2002:i:3-4:p:305-25
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henry Ohlsson & Michael Lundholm, 1998. "Wages, taxes and publicly provided day care," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 11(2), pages 185-204.
    2. Bergstrom, Ted & Blomquist, Soren, 1996. "The political economy of subsidized day care," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 443-457, November.
    3. repec:bla:scandj:v:94:y:1992:i:0:p:s173-87 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Sherwin Rosen, 1996. "Public Employment and the Welfare State in Sweden," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 729-740, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jakobsson, Niklas & Nordblom, Katarina, 2009. "Intergovernmental grants and fiscal competition," Working Papers in Economics 338, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    2. Halsteinli, Vidar & Ose, Solveig Osborg & Torvik, Heidi & Hagen, Terje P., 2006. "Allocation of labour to somatic and psychiatric specialist care--The effects of earmarked grants," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(2-3), pages 115-127, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blomquist, Soren & Christiansen, Vidar, 1998. "Topping Up or Opting Out? The Optimal Design of Public Provision Schemes," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 399-411, May.
    2. Brink, Anna & Nordblom, Katarina, 2005. "Child-care quality and fee structure: Effects on labor supply and leisure composition," Working Papers in Economics 157, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    3. Guyonne Kalb & Thor Thoresen, 2010. "A comparison of family policy designs of Australia and Norway using microsimulation models," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 255-287, June.
    4. Sören Blömquist & Vidar Christiansen, 1998. "Price Subsidies Versus Public Provision," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 5(3), pages 283-306, July.
    5. Blomquist, Soren & Christiansen, Vidar, 1999. "The political economy of publicly provided private goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 31-54, July.
    6. Zohal Hessami & Silke Uebelmesser, 2016. "A political-economy perspective on social expenditures: corruption and in-kind versus cash transfers," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 71-100, February.
    7. repec:use:tkiwps:3030 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. David Domeij, 2013. "Should Day Care be Subsidized?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 568-595.
    9. Minagawa Junichi & Upmann Thorsten, 2014. "A Single Parent’s Labor Supply: Evaluating Different Child Care Fees within an Intertemporal Framework," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 177-215, January.
    10. Ghazala Naz, 2004. "The impact of cash-benefit reform on parents’ labour force participation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 17(2), pages 369-383, June.
    11. Florence Jaumotte, 2005. "Les femmes sur le marché du travail : Évidence empirique sur le rôle des politiques économiques et autres déterminants dans les pays de l'OCDE," Revue économique de l'OCDE, Éditions OCDE, vol. 2003(2), pages 57-123.
    12. Bas van Groezen & L. Meijdam, 2009. "At whose service? Subsidizing services and the skill premium," Working Papers 09-30, Utrecht School of Economics.
    13. Lundholm , Michael & Ohlsson , Henry, 2002. "Negative Externalities in Day Care: Optimal Tax Policy Response," Working Papers in Economics 68, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    14. Junichi Minagawa & Thorsten Upmann, 2006. "Labor Supply and the Demand for Child Care: An Intertemporal Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 1819, CESifo.
    15. Zohal Hessami & Claudio Thum & Silke Uebelmesser, 2012. "A Political Economy Explanation for In-kind Redistribution: The Interplay of Corruption and Democracy," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2012-25, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    16. Florence Jaumotte, 2003. "Female Labour Force Participation: Past Trends and Main Determinants in OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 376, OECD Publishing.
    17. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2014. "Toward an efficiency rationale for the public provision of private goods," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(2), pages 375-408, June.
    18. Dan Anderberg, 2007. "Inefficient households and the mix of government spending," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 127-140, April.
    19. Lars Håkonsen & Trond Erik Lunder, 2015. "Matching versus General Grants: Local Government Response to Child-Care Subsidies," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 71(3), pages 299-327, September.
    20. Baroni, Elisa, 2011. "Effects of sharing the parental leave on pensioners' poverty and gender inequality in old age: A simulation in IFSIM," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 268-286, March.
    21. Steven J. Davis & Magnus Henrekson, 1997. "Industrial Policy, Employer Size, and Economic Performance in Sweden," NBER Chapters, in: The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model, pages 353-398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:110:y:2002:i:3-4:p:305-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.