@techreport{Behaghel2012Private,
abstract = {Contracting out public services to private firms has ambiguous effects when quality is imperfectly observable. Using a randomized experiment over a national sample in France, we compare the efficiency of the public employment service (PES) vs. private providers in delivering very similar job-search intensive counseling. The impact of each program is assessed with respect to the standard, low intensity track offered by the PES to the unemployed. We find that job-search assistance increases exit rates to employment by 15 to 35%. But the impact of the public program is about twice as large as compared to the private program, at least during the 6 first months after random assignment. We argue that the observed contract structure with the private providers has not overcome the underlying agency problem. We find no evidence of cream-skimming: rather, it seems that profit maximizing private providers have found it optimal to enroll as many job-seekers as they could, but to make minimum effort on the placement of some of them.},
address = {Bonn},
author = {Luc Behaghel and Bruno Cr\'{e}pon and Marc Gurgand},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {J64; J68; H44; 330; unemployment; job-search assistance; labor market intermediaries; private provision of public services; Arbeitsvermittlung; Personalberatung; Vergleich; Arbeitslosigkeit; Arbeitsuche; Frankreich},
language = {eng},
note = {urn:nbn:de:101:1-201208096362},
number = {6518},
publisher = {IZA},
title = {Private and public provision of counseling to job-seekers: Evidence from a large controlled experiment},
type = {Discussion Paper series, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/58591},
year = {2012}
}
