Working Paper No. 100. Vad vet vi om kommunal korruption?
Erlingsson, G. (2006). Vad vet vi om kommunal korruption? Ratio Working Paper No. 100.
Erlingsson, G. (2006). Vad vet vi om kommunal korruption? Ratio Working Paper No. 100.
Since the mid 90´s there has been an increased focus in media on public scandals in Swedish municipalities. This essay sets out to eludicate if there are reasons to believe that public corruption in Swedish municipalities is in fact increasing. By applying instruments from the institutional rational-choice genre, and by illustrating the main argument with empirical illustrations, the author draws the conclusion that there are compelling reasons to believe that organizational reforms during the last two decades – i.e. new public management – have shaped an incentive-structure which favours corrupt actitivies, hence increasing their frequency. The author concludes with a discussion on reform-strategies to counteract increasing corruption, and calls for extensive research on this under-researched topic.
Erlingsson, G.
2006
Ratio Working Paper
2024
Small Business Economics, 62(2), 775-806
The dominant ‘sand in the wheels’ view holds that entrepreneurship is strongly inhibited by corruption. Challenging this, the ‘grease the wheels’ view maintains that corruption might increase entrepreneurship in highly regulated economies. We extend the basic predictions of these theories by examining entrepreneurs’ start-up decisions, as well as their location choices, in a seemingly low-corruption environment: Swedish municipalities. Combining a validated index of corruption perceptions in local government with population data on new entrepreneurs, nested logit models reveal that even in a low-corruption setting such as Sweden, perceptions of corruption can deter latent entrepreneurs. We also find that a minority of entrepreneurs relocate from their home municipalities to establish their start-ups elsewhere. Surprisingly and contrary to expectations, these relocating entrepreneurs often relocate from relatively low-corruption municipalities to others that are more corrupt. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed.
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2019
What is the role of innovation policy for accomplishing renewal of mature industries in Western economies? Drawing upon an unusually rich dataset spanning 9752 digitized archival documents, we categorize and code decisions taken by policymakers on several levels while also mapping and quantifying the strategic activities of both entrant firms and incumbent monopolists over a decade. Our data concerns two empirical cases from Sweden during the time period 1980–1990: the financial sector and the telecommunications sector. In both industries, a combination of technological and institutional upheaval came into motion during this time period which in turn fueled the revitalization of the Swedish economy in the subsequent decades. Our findings show that Swedish policymakers in both cases consistently acted in order to promote the emergence of more competition and de novo entrant firms at the expense of established monopolies. The paper quantifies and documents this process while also highlighting several enabling conditions. In conclusion, the results indicate that successful innovation policy in mature economies is largely a matter of strategically dealing with resourceful vested interest groups, alignment of expectations, and removing resistance to industrial renewal.