Does Competition Increase Economic Efficiency in Swedish County Councils?

Abstract

The Swedish health care system is to a large extent publicly managed by 21 local county councils. During recent years there has been a movement were local county councils have opted to allow more of the production to be performed by alternative producers (i.e. private firms, cooperatives etc.). The purpose of this paper is thus to study if local county councils who has a large proportion of health care performed by alternative producers are more economically efficient than other county councils. The results indicate that county councils with more alternative caregivers are supplying their services more efficiently.Economic efficiency in health care; Data Envelopment Analysis; Tobit regression