Publications & Documents

Gotland is Sweden’s largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. While Sweden has numerous Islands, Gotland’s development trajectory is unique in Sweden. It is the smallest region in the country in population size and economic base, and it is located the furthest from the mainland (90 km). As an island economy, it must overcome a number of development challenges including its small critical mass, remoteness to larger markets, vulnerability to climate change and limited administrative capacity. Nonetheless, it has a number of important assets, such as being an attractive destination, having a high potential for bio- and circular economy, a university providing research and education, very good broadband connectivity, and a strong local identity and vibrant civil society. This Territorial Review benchmark’s Gotland’s economic performance against comparable OECD regions to identify areas of untapped potential and develops recommendations in three main areas to help improve the quality of life for residents and support more efficient use of public resources. The first focuses on improving infrastructure planning, investments and delivery. The second on supporting the business environment and innovation eco-system and the third, on improving administrative and financing capacity to deliver quality services throughout the territory.

This policy brief brings together key reflections from the Policy Dialogues in Focus: International Insights for School Funding Reform in Sweden. This seminar offered Swedish policy makers an opportunity to learn from the reform experiences of school funding policy specialists from peer education systems (Australia, United Kingdom and the Netherlands). It also provided them with insights into relevant international comparative and empirical perspectives from the OECD Secretariat. A new seminar series, the Policy Dialogues in Focus, establishes targeted policy dialogue events, driven by a country/group of countries and tailored to their specific needs. These seminars mobilise the knowledge base of the Education Policy Outlook and other relevant OECD expertise on targeted topics. Through an active stakeholder network of international senior policy makers, it also offers first-hand accounts of managing complex policy processes to help provide powerful peer learning experiences for policy makers looking for inspiration or insights from their international peers.

A first step to implement effective migrant integration policies is to know who does what in policy sectors key to integration. Responding to this need, this paper offers policy makers a tool to understand the organisation of public action in key sectors for integration - Employment, Education, Housing, and Health/Welfare – in a sample of 10 OECD countries: Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. The complexity of the division of powers among levels of government calls for coordination mechanisms between actors, whatever the level of decentralisation. Besides, it throws lights on subnational governments’ role in integrating migrants and enabling them to participate to local development for the benefits of all. The geographic differences that exist in migrant presence and outcomes mean countries should build on local authorities' knowledge of local realities, aptitudes to coordinate different policy fields at the relevant scale and cooperate with non-governmental organisations.

OECD countries deliver publicly-funded employment services through different institutional arrangements. While in most OECD countries the majority of such services are delivered by public employment services, in two in five OECD and EU countries (or regions) they are partly or fully contracted out to external providers, including for-profit and not-for-profit entities. Contracting out employment services to outside providers offers many potential benefits: an increased flexibility to scale capacity in line with changes in unemployment, the possibility of offering services more cost-effectively, the option to better tailor services through the use of specialised service providers and the possibility to offer jobseekers choice of providers. However, achieving these benefits will depend on the actual design and monitoring of the contracting arrangements that are put in place. Focusing on the job brokerage, counselling and case-management employment services typically provided by public agencies, this paper reviews the experiences of OECD countries that have contracted out employment services through outcome-based payment schemes. It highlights the need to carefully consider questions related to the design and implementation of this form of contracting: fostering competition amongst potential providers, setting appropriate minimum service requirements and prices for different client groups, and ensuring the accountability of providers through monitoring and evaluations. These issues are discussed based on country examples, which are also detailed in factsheets contained in the online annex of the paper.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Sweden as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This edition has a special focus on the impact of COVID‑19. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.

Regional inequality is low in Sweden compared to most other OECD countries, but has been rising over the past decades, fuelling discontent in parts of the country, whose inhabitants feel left behind. The younger population is increasingly concentrated in the largest cities, which also enjoy the highest productivity growth. Demographic trends exacerbate the difficulty in providing equal public services across the country. Healthy public finances are allowing the government to increase its support to municipalities and regions to adjust to demographic developments and local operating conditions. Beyond this effort, keeping regional inequality in check will require upgrading the sub-national government fiscal framework, enhancing public service efficiency, especially through digitalisation, and promoting regional convergence further, especially by strengthening the role of universities in regional knowledge and innovation networks.

Regional inequality has increased in Sweden over the past decades, albeit from a low level. While redistribution and other public policies can narrow regional gaps in income, well-being and access to services, productivity growth is key to maintaining economic dynamism, creating job opportunities and attracting and retaining skilled workers. Against this background, this paper documents the performance of Swedish large regions (TL2) on the main productivity drivers identified by the literature. Panel regressions on a dataset covering up to 125 OECD regions in 17 countries identify the factors associated with high regional productivity, namely rail and road connectivity, knowledge-intensive employment and research and education. Investment in construction and finance is linked to somewhat weaker productivity. Even after taking these factors into account, the Stockholm region benefits from a sizeable productivity advantage, which likely reflects agglomeration effects.