Municipality owned enterprises: Emergence and consequences

The objective of the project is to map the emergence of municipality owned enterprises (MOEs) in Sweden since the beginning of the 1970s and review economic research in the field. Based on longitudinal firm-level data combined with municipality-level political and economic data we describe the emergence of MOEs and variation across municipalities to see what characterises municipalities with a (relatively) large number of MOEs (or alternatively, in terms of number of employees or turnover) in different sectors. In turn we study potential consequences for the municipal economy regarding e.g., debt, expenditures, tax rates, and fees. Previous Swedish studies in the field have analyzed issues of corruption, management and accountability. The goal of this project is to contribute to the general debate on municipality owned enterprises highlighting additional economic aspects.