Wage differences between women and men in Sweden - the impact of skill mismatch

Since the early 2000s regional enlargement (“regionförstoring”) has become an important objective in the Swedish regional policy. Smaller regions are intended to be functionally integrated into larger neighbours through intensified commuting. This strive is facilitated by the fact that the coveted process seems self-propelled and already running. The number of functional regions is reported to have halved during the three last decades of the 20th century and are expected to half again until 2030. However, it has been difficult to confirm this fast development in other data. In this paper a set of explanations to this seemingly contradictory condition are suggested. The conclusion is that the Swedish regional enlargement partly might be fictitious, an effect of flaws and errors in the data and the way used to measure the process. The unfortunate message is that regional enlargement might not be such an easily practicable way to regional development it seems to be and that the assumption of a future Sweden of only 55-60 functional regions might have defective grounds.