Provider Ownership and Indicators of Service Quality: Evidence from Swedish Residential Care Homes

Abstract The provision of public services by for-profit and non-profit organizations is widespread in OECD countries, but the jury still out on whether outsourcing has improved service quality. This article seeks to nuance existing debate bringing fore variation quality between different types non-public providers. Building theories dimensional publicness incomplete contracts, we argue that forms ownership are associated with varying intensity incentives for profit maximization, ultimately affecting Using residential elder care homes Sweden as our universe cases, leverage novel panel data 2,639 facilities from 2012 2019, capturing type home operators, against a set indicators pertaining inputs, processes, outcomes. results suggest providers high-powered make profit, such those owned private equity firms publicly traded companies, perform worse most selected compared limited liability companies nonprofits. Our findings quality-shading not same all have important implications government contracting contract management.