Spatial mismatch through local public employment agencies Answers from a French quasi-experiment Spatial Mismatch through Local Public Employment Agencies? Answers from a French Quasi-Experiment

Using the unanticipated creation of a new agency in the French region of Lyon as a quasi-natural experiment, we question whether distance to local public employment agencies (LPEAs) is a new channel for spatial mismatch. Contrary to past evidence based on aggregated data and consistently with the spatial mismatch literature, we find no evidence of a worker/agency spatial mismatch, which pleads for a resizing of the French LPEA network. However, echoing with the literature on the institutional determinants of the local public employment agencies' efficiency, we do find detrimental institutional transitory effects