We review the literature on public sector outsourcing to explore if the theoretical predictions from the incomplete … contracts literature hold up to recent empirical evidence. Guided by theory, we arrange services according to the type and … magnitude of their contractibility problems. The empirical studies point at rather favourable outsourcing outcomes, in terms of …

using a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time, as well as between services. Our …, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of … economic efficiency. Starting out from different theories, we investigate political explanations of government outsourcing …

rewards to performance increases effort, but that they can also backfire, reducing effort. Intrinsic motivation, the internal …. If the incentives crowd-out intrinsic motivation, and the effect is large enough, the net motivational effect on effort …, is one facet of intrinsic motivation, triggered by the combination of high-powered incentives and egoistic principal …

An explanation for motivation crowding-out phenomena is developed in a social preferences framework. Besides selfish … that norm. High-powered incentives may crowd out motivation as pessimism about the norm is conveyed. But by choosing fixed …

performance of the treatment stores. As predicted by theory, we find that treatment stores that lag far behind do not respond to …