Market Solutions

The reliance on market solutions by the Swedish public sector has increased significantly in recent decades. The Swedish example is characterized by an openness to market solutions in many public-sector activities and by a mix of procurement arrangements and choice-based arrangements. The overall experience is that the consequences of the extension of market solutions have been less profound than has been argued by either proponents or adversaries. The benefit of an extended reliance on market solutions is hard to evaluate, but in the examples considered in this chapter – elderly care, schooling and health care – a cautious interpretation is that there is evidence of some modest positive effects and little evidence of severely adverse effects.