Erik Lakomaa

In an important and much cited study, Pettersson-Lidbom (2008) identifies significant left-wing majority coalition effects on economic outcomes for Swedish local governments, 1974-1994. We first replicate the original study and then extend the original research by applying Pettersson-Lidbom's empirical model using new and more detailed coalition data, compiled from registry books and register data recently made available from Statistics Sweden. The data allows us to test for left party policy outcomes including previously undefined coalitions, such as left minority coalitions and coalitions with local or emerging parties. We find that Pettersson-Lidbom's previous results hold and are even strengthened using the new data and some alternative specifications, but the results are heavily dependent on the definition of left-wing rule. When including left wing minority coalitions and left-wing coalitions including the Green Party, previous significant differences between the left and right are no longer discernable.

While numerous studies examine the effects of school competition on student performance, little research directly addresses a key critique of competition: its potential to negatively affect parental engagement and voice. We draw on Hirschman's theory of voice to argue that voucher-based school competition increases opportunities for exit but may crowd out voice. To assess the causal effects of competition on parental voice, we employ a robust two-way fixed effects difference-in-differences framework, comparing municipalities in Sweden that introduced competition with those that did not. Our findings indicate that school complaints decline following the introduction of competition. This decrease in voice is driven by neither a decrease in problems in school nor by changes in teaching staff quality or attrition. This suggests that the decrease in complaints is driven not by an increase in school quality but rather by a change in how much parents voice their concerns. These results offer new insights into the unintended consequences of school competition reforms, highlighting how marketbased policies may shape school quality beyond their intended effects.

Achieving and maintaining a monopolist position is often assumed to be among the objectives of a firm. However, there are instances where it is better to operate in a competitive market than remain a monopolist. Monopolistic firms may, therefore, push for deregulation - at least on their terms. We introduce the concept of monopolists for competition to analyse two such companies, Swedish telecom operator Televerket and the Stockholm Stock Exchange (SSE). Thus, the paper contributes to the literature on incumbent action and corporate political activity (CPA) by state-owned/state-controlled companies, a field that has received little interest in business history research. We find that the personal political skills of the companies' managers played a crucial role in the deregulatory process, as institutional obstacles prevented them from using many standard CPA tools. Fear of being perceived as monopolistic also restricted them from leveraging their market positions when controlling the evolving market structures.

Previous research in business and management history has identified the Icarus paradox, which describes how organisations may fall due to overconfidence and hubris. We build upon previous research on paradoxes in business history and introduce the notion of an inverted Icarus paradox. Using rich archival sources coded in a relational database, we show how an entrant firm, Comvik, outmanoeuvred an established government monopoly in the non-market domain from 1980 to 1990, despite inferior resources and a weak market position. The government monopoly Televerket faced an inverted Icarus paradox; it could not leverage its strengths and political connections as they were stuck in a David versus Goliath narrative where public opinion was more sympathetic to the entrant firm Comvik.

In the 1990s, three Scandinavian news media companies, Bonnier, Kinnevik, and Schibsted, internationalized their newspapers. Despite doing this during the same period, competing in the same industry and institutional environment, being exposed to the same opportunities by the opening of the Eastern European markets, and all belonging to a smaller language area, they differed in their internationalization models as well as in their outcomes. Despite initial successes , Bonnier and Kinnevik eventually discontinued their newspapers in the new markets, in many cases following significant losses, while Schibsted fared better. The main explanation for using different internationalization models was differences in business models, basically striving to do business internationally in a similar way as domestically. That is, they did not choose a specific internationalization model but sought to simply expand their business models internationally. Consequently, this article finds that when researching internationalization, more focus should be placed on business models.

After 1980, the telecom industry rapidly changed. Several new technologies were introduced, and telecom sectors in many countries opened for competition. The new technologies were available to all operators, but not all technologies assumed the same risks. Drawing upon rich archival sources from the Swedish telecom operator Televerket (after 1993, Telia), we examine the investment in and management of one new technology - ISDN. By exploring the choices and rationales for initiating and ending a technology project, we find that they may be pursued for political reasons - what we call 'investment as corporate political activity', and that many years of losses are sometimes not enough to abandon these projects. We also identify a monopolist logic in which projects can be maintained for use as bargaining chips in negotiations over deregulation or options to expand in markets after deregulation.

Research on consumer innovation in health care has shown that patients are important sources of new or improved treatments, care services and diagnostic tools. This paper points to another hitherto overlooked class of consumer innovation in health care, which we call collective consumer innovation. These self-organized service innovations emerge under regulatory constraints, occur on the system level, are collaborative, and tend to cause institutional change. We use historic and contemporary cases from the field of health care in order to document the importance of collective consumer innovation and devise a model to analyze their economic role.Collective consumer innovation is more likely under stricter regulation and when the production cost disadvantage of consumers vis-`a-vis the formal sector is smaller. The role of market size and the scale of technological change is more complex. If either is large, innovation will be undertaken by the formal sector, while no innovation at all takes place if either is small. The model demonstrates that consumer innovations can enhance social welfare by improving the tradeoff between safety and experimental leeway, though they under certain conditions can lower welfare. Empirically, there are numerous cases where collective consumer innovations in the form of novel health services, policies and governance systems were adapted by public or corporate health care providers.

In connection with World War II, the advertising industry in neutral Sweden began cooperating with the government. This proved beneficial for the industry since blockades and rationing caused the civilian advertising market to almost disappear. After the war, the cooperation continued, albeit primarily regarding military matters. Later, however, the government began procuring advertising and media services on largely commercial grounds. This paper covers the history of the relationship between the advertising industry and the government and provides an analysis of the influence of the public advertising market and cold war institutions on the industry. I find that the government, by acting as a customer of last resort, conserved the industry structure and made it possible for the Swedish advertising cartel to survive World War II, and for the large firms that dominated the industry during most of the century to survive the dissolution of the cartel in 1965.

The Social Democratic Party not only ruled Sweden for most of the twentieth century but also owned one of the country's largest advertising groups. The company, founded in 1947 as Folkreklam and later renamed Forenade ARE-Bolagen, rapidly became dominant in outdoor advertising in Sweden and remained in that position until the late 1980s. This paper expands the previous research on party-owned enterprises, a type of businesses that is rare in the Western democratic world, covering the history of ARE from its inception to its eventual merger with JCDecaux in 1997. It is shown that the owner relationship with the party was highly beneficial for the company, as it provided preferential access to adverting space and public contracts from government agencies and municipalities without formal competition. The party benefited from the control over sensitive information pertraining to strategies in political propaganda during elections and from the financial contribution of ARE.

Decentralization of education has been a recurrent policy debate in many countries. In 1989, the Swedish Parliament decided to transfer the political and economic responsibility for primary and secondary education from the state (the national level) to the municipalities. The reform, implemented in 1991/1992, increased the size of the Swedish municipal sector by one-fifth, making the reform one of the most sweeping in Swedish history. Despite broad support for the reform in Parliament, the process was slow, and deliberations continued for twenty years before the final decision was made. To understand the microprocesses underlying this decision and the slowness of the process itself, we refer to insights from behavioral economics. In addition to the empirical contribution, we show how behavioral economics can be used to improve historical analysis of decision-making processes. The article is based on studies of public records and on a unique set of interviews with key advisers and top-level decision makers, including the prime minister, which allow us not only to describe the process thoroughly but also to analyze it in the broader context of the Swedish welfare state.