PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLISH
Fredriksson, A., 2025 (with Sylvia Saes). Quantifying political effects in the spatial allocation of public services. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 99, 102180 (link, link to Working Paper)
Paper abstract: The spatial allocation of citizen-accessed public services is typically influenced by factors related to citizen demand, but also by other factors, including political considerations. We develop a method to quantify how political factors influence citizens’ spatial access to services. The method is illustrated through the study of two different public services in the state of São Paulo, Brazil; Citizen Service Centers and outpatient medical clinics. Each of the two programs, which are analyzed separately, consists of a number of units for in-person service delivery, spread across the state. We first build a regression model to analyze the allocation of each service, using citizen demand, official program criteria, and related variables as explanatory factors. The degree of explanation of the models improves once political variables are included. For each service, the geographical location of some of the implemented service units are explained by the political variables. Operations Research methods are then used to find an alternative, optimal, spatial allocation for the units discerned as political in the regression analysis. We quantify how much average citizen travel distance would have decreased, had this counterfactual allocation been implemented. Travel distance is one measure of welfare in spatial allocation problems and on average distances are thus longer in the presence of politically induced allocations. Longer distances can, in turn, have other first order welfare effects, for instance on health outcomes. Understanding political effects is thus important. Related to these considerations, we offer policy conclusions and discuss the generalizability of the study.
Fredriksson, A., 2024. Book Review. Spectrum Auctions: Designing markets to benefit the public, industry and the economy—Geoffrey Myers (London, U.K.: LSE Press, 2023, 314 pp.). IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 43:2, 39-41. (link)
Fredriksson, A., 2020. One Stop Shops for public services: Evidence from Citizen Service Centers in Brazil. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 39, 1133-1165. (link)
Paper abstract: Citizen Service Centers are government offices where different authorities are co-located and where several public services are offered in the same physical location. The goal of implementing such One Stop Shops for public services is to solve problems with a malfunctioning government bureaucracy for frontline service delivery. In spite of reforms in at least 70 countries, however, there are few evaluations. This paper evaluates the impact of Poupatempo (“Savetime”), a Brazilian Citizen Service Center reform that has inspired similar programs in other countries. We collect data on one of the most common errands at the Brazilian bureaucracy, driver’s license renewal, and evaluate the impact of Poupatempo on the time, number of trips and payments needed to undertake the renewal, and on other variables representing transaction costs, red tape and transparency in the citizen-state interaction. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate large reductions in the time expended by citizens and in proxies for transaction costs, but are less encouraging for the social quality of the licensing procedure, which we also evaluate. We discuss whether incentives to speed up processes prevailed where other steering instruments would have been more appropriate, and explore remedies. We also discuss limitations to establishing a true One Stop Shop.
Fredriksson, A. 2019 (with Gustavo Magalhães de Oliveira). Impact evaluation using Difference-in-Differences. RAUSP Management Journal, 54, 519-532 (special issue on Research Methods in Management). (link)
The paper aims to present the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) method in an accessible language to a broad research audience from a variety of management-related fields. We cover the main issues involved when conducting DiD studies, including the fundamentals as well as some recent developments.
Fredriksson, A., 2017. Location-Allocation of public services – Citizen access, transparency and measurement. A method and evidence from Brazil and Sweden. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 59, 1-12. (link, link to Working Paper)
Fredriksson, A., 2014. Bureaucracy intermediaries, corruption and red tape. Journal of Development Economics, 108, 256-273. (link)
Becker, T., Fredriksson, A., 2012. The European transition economies. In Mordechai E. Kreinin and Michael G. Plummer (eds.), Oxford Handbook of International Commercial Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (paper, book, review)
Fredriksson, A., 2009. Bureaucracy, informality and taxation: Essays in Development Economics and Public Finance. IIES Monograph Series No. 65, Institute for International Economic Studies. (link)
PUBLICATION IN SWEDISH
Fredriksson, A., 2016. Servicekontorens rumsliga fördelning: Kan operationsanalys bidra till en effektiv lokalisering av offentliga tjänster? Ekonomisk Debatt 44(3): 49-61. [A study of Swedish Citizen Service Centers, published in the Journal of the Swedish Economic Association.] (link)
PUBLICATION IN PORTUGUESE
Fredriksson, A., 2016. Poupatempo – Uma Avaliação de Impacto com o Olhar no cidadão. Boletím FIPE 427: 34-37.[A summary of some of the results of the data collection project on Citizen Service Centers in São Paulo.] (link)
WORK IN PROGRESS (PUBLIC SERVICES)
Evaluating the expansion of Citizen Service Centers in Sweden (Working Paper coming soon)
The Swedish National Government Service Centre (Statens Servicecenter) operates around 130 Citizen Service Centers across Sweden. The centers attend to citizen errands related to taxes, social security, pensions, unemployment, and other. One of the objectives of the program is to increase in-person access to public services in rural areas. The number of centers first expanded rapidly between 2018 and 2024, and is currently instead decreasing. In this project I evaluate the expansion in terms of if it has reached new users, inspired by a Difference-in-Differences framework. I also discuss the type of user data needed to make decisions about the spatial distribution of service centers (expansions or reductions), and address current data limitations. Building on earlier work, I also discuss the administrative and political rationale of the program.
Access to emergency hospitals in Sweden (Working Paper coming soon)
Recent years have seen a debate in Sweden about spatial access to healthcare, in particular emergency care. On the one hand, most medical experts argue for the gathering of advanced medical care in fewer and more specialized large (university) hospitals. Many public administrators and politicians, typically driven by an economic (budget) rationale, seem to follow suit. On the other hand, Sweden is a country of large distances. In some northern regions, in particular, there are long travel distances to most types of public services, including emergency care. Based on fine-grained population and distance data, I first analyze the service area and population of each emergency hospital, and average travel distances. Surprisingly, discussions about emergency care rarely use such detailed spatial data. I highlight long travel distances and large regional differences and also discuss the implications of administrative (county) borders. I then discuss “second closest” distances, which is an access measure if a hospital were shut down. As several emergency clinics are currently candidates for being closed, some of these distances are not unlikely to become “closest” distances, which is likely to spur an even fiercer debate. In addition to analyzing the distance effects resulting from the decentralized nature of health care in Sweden, I argue for the incorporation of travel cost in welfare measures of health care access. When discussing the above two main lines of argument, medical specialization vs. citizen distances, I also contrast Sweden to other European countries. Alternative scenarios and arguments, such as a nationwide emergency helicopter service, and societal redundancy and resilience in general, are also touched upon.
Location of public services – theory and application to health services in Brazil
WORK IN PROGRESS (RADIO SPECTRUM)
A theoretical study of the licensing and commons models for radio spectrum management
WORKING PAPER
Fredriksson, A., 2020. Optimal penalties on informal firms. (link)
Paper abstract: What, if anything, should be done about the informal economy in developing countries? I study optimal penalties vis-à-vis informal firms in a simple capital accumulation model under three different government objectives: maximize formalization, maximize tax revenue from formalizing informal firms, and maximize welfare. A general conclusion, for all objectives, is that low productivity informal firms should be left alone. Higher productivity informal firms should instead face positive penalties. As the three objectives lead to differences in the range and severity of penalties towards such firms, however, the study also highlights the importance of discussing the appropriate policy objective vis-à-vis informality.