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http://hdl.handle.net/10419/58591
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| Title: | | Private and public provision of counseling to job-seekers: Evidence from a large controlled experiment  |
| Authors: | | Behaghel, Luc Crépon, Bruno Gurgand, Marc |
| Issue Date: | | 2012 |
| Series/Report no.: | | Discussion Paper series, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit 6518 |
| 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. |
| Subjects: | | unemployment job-search assistance labor market intermediaries private provision of public services |
| JEL: | | J64 J68 H44 |
| Persistent Identifier of the first edition: | | urn:nbn:de:101:1-201208096362 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | IZA Discussion Papers, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA)
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