Volume 20, Number 4 (Fall) 1985
Cavin, Edward S., and Frank P. Stafford. 1985. "Efficient Provision of Employment Service Outputs: A Production Frontier Analysis." Journal of Human Resources 20(4):484-503.
Considerable policy interest has developed in assessing the performance of employment and training programs, most notably the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.(CETA) and the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). This paper develops a production frontier model for the Employment Service and assesses the relative efficiency of the 51 State Employment Security Agencies (SESAs) in attaining program outcomes close to that frontier. The models specified account for factors in the local program environment that are outside of management control, as well as for management choices among program outputs, and are estimated using state-level data for the fiscal years 1977-1982.
Cavin is a Senior Economist with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
Stafford is Professor of Economics, University of Michigan.
This paper is based in part on work performed by Edward
Cavin under Research and Evaluation Contract No. 20-34-82-07 with the Employment
and Training Administration, U. S. Department of Labor. It does not necessarily
represent the official position or policy of the Department of Labor or of MPR.
We wish to thank William ShowIer of the U. S. Department of Labor for his
invaluable assistance. We received helpful comments on an earlier draft from Ned
Gramlich and from members of the Labor Studies Group of the National Bureau of
Economic Research. Also, we wish to thank Celeste Fuller and Monica Capizzi for
their patience in typing multiple drafts of this paper.
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