This paper compares the effectiveness of public and private providers of employment services. Reporting from a randomized field experiment conducted in Denmark we assess empirically the case for contracting out employment services for a well-defined group of highly educated job-seekers...

Randomized experiments provide policy relevant treatment effects if there are no spillovers between participants and nonparticipants. We show that this assumption is violated for a Danish activation program for unemployed workers. Using a difference-in-difference model we show that the...

We describe the statistical model used for profiling new unemployed workers in Denmark. When a worker during his or her first six months in unemployment enters the employment office for the first time, this model predicts whether he or she will be unemployed for more than six months from that...