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The literature expects public service motivation (PSM) to affect performance, but most of the existing studies of this relationship use subjective performance data and focus on output rather than outcome. This article investigates the association between PSM and the performance of Danish teachers using an objective outcome measure (the students' academic performance in their final examinations). Combining survey data and administrative register data in a multilevel dataset, we are able to control very robustly for the specific characteristics of the students (n = 5,631), the schools (n = 85), and other teacher characteristics (n = 694) besides PSM. We find that PSM is positively associated with examination marks. The result indicates that PSM may be relevant for performance improvements.

We investigate whether job loss as the result of displacement causes hospitalization for stress-related diseases which are widely thought to be associated with unemployment. In doing this, we use much better data than any previous investigators. Our data are a random 10% sample of the male population of Denmark for the years 1981-1999 with full records on demographics, health and work status for each person, and with a link from every working person to a plant. We use the method of 'matching on observables' to estimate the counter-factual of what would have happened to the health of a particular group of displaced workers if they had not in fact been displaced. Our results indicate unequivocally that being displaced in Denmark does not cause hospitalization for stress-related disease. An analysis of the power of our test suggests that even though we are looking for a relatively rare outcome, our data set is large enough to show even quite small an effect if there were any. Supplementary analyses do not show any causal link from displacement or unemployment to our health outcomes for particular groups that might be thought to be more susceptible.

*We analyse the effect of active labour-market programmes on the hazard rate into regular employment for newly arrived immigrants using the timing-of-events duration model. We take account of language course participation and progression in destination country language skills. We use rich administrative data from Denmark. We find substantial lock-in effects of participation in active labour-market programmes. Post programme effects on the hazard rate to regular employment are significantly positive for wage subsidy programmes, but not for other types of programmes. For language course participants, improvement in language proficiency has significant and substantial positive effects on the hazard rate to employment. JEL Classification:J64, J24, J68, J61, C41

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