Collaborators, supplementers, purchasers and privatizers - profiling the social and health care delivery forms of finnish municipalities through cluster analysis
分析了芬兰309个市政当局在10项社会与医疗服务上的提供形式，通过聚类识别出五种类型，发现混合提供占主导，且不同配置下成本差异不大，小城市可通过合作实现规模经济。
Municipalities´ service delivery choices are under constant public debate. To better understand the configurations of service delivery forms across different municipalities, we analyse all 309 Finnish municipalities’ delivery of 10 social and healthcare services. Five clusters emerge: Collaborators, Supplementers, Purchasers, Privatizers and Decentralizers (likely representing municipalities in transition). Overall, mixed delivery dominates. While the clusters present differences in municipal characteristics, surprisingly few statistically significant cost differences emerge, suggesting different configurations of efficient service delivery choices exist. Smaller municipalities can achieve economies of scale by collaboration, while large municipalities seem to ‘get away’ with going against transaction cost economics theory recommendations.