In this paper we discuss how the "encouragement design" used in randomized controlled trials can be extended to a setting with two treatments and one control group. Conditions to interpret the Two-Stage Least Squares (TSLS) estimates causally are stronger than in the case with only one treatment...

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...

This paper studies the role of culture in shaping unemployment outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on local comparisons across a language barrier in Switzerland. This Röstigraben separates cultural groups, but neither labor markets nor political jurisdictions. Local contrasts across the...