@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp6518,
            	author={Behaghel, Luc and Crépon, Bruno and Gurgand, Marc},
            	title={Private and Public Provision of Counseling to Job-Seekers: Evidence from a Large Controlled Experiment},
            	year={2012},
	month={Apr},
            	institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)},
            	address={Bonn},
            	type={IZA Discussion Paper},
            	number={6518},
            	url={https://www.iza.org/publications/dp6518},
	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.},
	keywords={private provision of public services;unemployment;job-search assistance;labor market intermediaries},
            }