Abstract
Employer cofinancing in disability insurance (DI) systems aims to reduce the inflow to DI by making employers internalise their DI costs. We evaluate a cofinancing system for the local government sector in Sweden inspired by the literature on yardstick competition. In the system, local governments are responsible for the DI of their employees, while being compensated by the central government for their expected DI payments. The arrangement essentially eliminates the large fiscal externalities associated with DI. Also, the arrangement can be implemented within current administrative setups, and the design credibly ensures that no extra costs are imposed on the local government sector in the aggregate. Drawing on Swedish employer-employee matched data, we show that the net transfers implied by the scheme are quite large as a share of DI payments, but sufficiently small as a share of tax payments to not be onerous, and that they only marginally increase regional inequality.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 661-680 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Social Policy and Administration |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful for comments from Håkan Selin, Per Johansson, Axel Arvidsson, Tina Eriksson, Gabriella Sjögren‐Lindquist, Håkan Svärdman and two anonymous reviewers. The report has been financed by Forte's grant (2013‐2482) to the project “Åldrande och hälsa” (Aging and Health) at IFAU and Uppsala University. Johannes Hagen acknowledges financial support from Forte's grant no 2017‐00092. 1
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Social Policy & Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords
- disability insurance
- employer cofinancing
- local government
- yardstick competition
