Research On Quasi-Markets Delivery Mechanism Of Public Employment Training Services

Promoting employment by training is not only one of the commonly ways for every government to solve employment problems, but is the very way for every government to implement its public service functions, this is not excepting for the Chinese government. In China, the delivery mechanisms of public employment training have undergone about three periods:government monopoly delivery during in the time of the planned economy, public/private training institutions delivery training separately from 1980s to the middle of 1990s, and government appointed public/private training institutions to mixed delivery. The multipolar training institutions which are comprised by public employment training centers, public vocational-technical schools/colleges, and private training institutions have become the important forces for local government to accomplish the public employment training service mission. But such kind of mixed delivery mechanism with multipolar training institutions has many problems, such as lack of competition, custom’s choice, management confusion, insufficient supervision, government’s role is unclear, etc. Which caused the public employment training service low effectiveness, low performance. The old delivery mechanism is not competent for the training needs during the time of vocational training facing all kinds of labors in China currently, so looking for a new governance mechanism to improved public employment training service delivering is becoming more and more pressing.The quasi-market was emerged in the early of 1990s in western countries, which emphasizes the dividing supplier from producer, calls for bids competitively, and/or uses vouchers. The quasi-market has become an effective governance mechanism for multipolar institutions participating competitively in delivering the public services and social beings which had been delivered by government monopoly in Welfare States traditionally. Constructing quasi-market mechanism for government’ purchasing public employment training service not only has distinctive and comparative advantages, but also a useful analytical framework. The quasi-market model of public employment training service emphasizes on employing the markets forces to improve high quality services by users’choice and producers’competition. Its operation mechanisms comprise the dividing between purchaser and producer, designating training institutions by bids, purchasing training services for designated training institutions by contract or quasi-contract. In a quasi-market, the roles of government agencies should be training’s organizer, funds’supplier, quality’s supervisor, not the service’s producer. The different kinds of training institutions competitively participate in the public employment training production. Every individual trainee can choice and receive the training service by his/her own option.Government purchasing public employment training quasi-market’s effectively operating depends on a series of basic conditions such as a market structure based on competition and choice, full information, low transaction cost, effective incitement. Its objectives are to improve service effectiveness, producers’responsiveness, users’ choice and service’s diversity. There are three kinds alternative ways to construct the quasi-market for government purchasing public employment training service based on the precondition of dividing purchaser from producer, which include the interior quasi-market based on management-by-objective, the quasi-market based on outsourcing contracts, and the one based on vouching. With the purchasers/producers dividing, the principle-agent relation and contract transaction between purchaser and producers will take place accordingly. In order to make the training quasi-markets operating effectively, to realize the quasi-market’s objectives of "efficiency, responsive, selectiveness and equality", the government needs to construct several governance mechanisms, such as incentive mechanism, information mechanism, and control mechanism.Compared to the traditional training models, the new one’s advantage is to help local governments to fully utilize the participation of social training forces to fulfill the enormous public training tasks faced by our local government, to construct an effective delivery mechanism which can promote training quality by competition, to change the user’s passive situation and improve their selectiveness, to help local government manage effectively the mixed delivery of public employment training, to propel government’s role transformation.Since the beginning of the new century, with the announcement of integrating urban and rural development, some local government in China have explored and set up several new models to deliver public employment training service. For example, "Subsidy Individual Training Account "in Shanghai and Nanjing, "Government Purchasing Training Products" in Taizhou, Suzhou, Jiangxi, Tianjin, Yantai, "Inte-grated Training" in Cixi. By analyzing the practice cases in local governments, we can discover that the local governments take the construction of the basic conditions of the public employment training marketization seriously. They have fostered a contestability market structure which was composed by many purchasers and many producers. The purchasers involve multiple levels of government and multiple departments of government. The producers are very plural, include public institutes and private agents. The trainees have covered all of the labors from urban to rural. The public training markets can provide many kinds of multi levels training programs for the trainees to choose. In the markets the government have emphasized utilizing bids and contracts, set up effective training management systems, incentive mechanisms, information mechanisms, and control mechanisms, emphasized the training supervision and result assessment.By analyzing the national statistical data and our surveys, we can make a rough conclusion that government constructs such a training market’s performances are convincing. The achievements on trainees amount, efficiency, quality, contestability, equality, fairness, and so on, are remarkable. Such huge achievements not only have made a great contribution to improve Chinese labor’s vocational skills and promote their employment or re-employment, but demonstrated the advantages of quasi-market model over the old ones, thus form a governing way for the local government to effectively exploit the diversified training institutes in the mixed delivering services.However, from the perspective of quasi-market reform, we can find public employment training service quasi-markets are still facing several typically challenges: in some areas, especially in rural areas, the training market structure is hard to be developed and competition is impossible; the principle and the agent break the rulers and laws, cheat the subsidies; public employment training policy incentive is not sufficient for the participants; local governments lack enough management abilities. The key to solve these challenges more depends on Government itself. The ways for the Government to exert itself to constructing and improving the quasi-markets of government purchasing public employment training service are:the Government should really change its perception, clarify its roles and responsibilities, improve its contract-out and management capacity; the Government should foster a contestable market and ensure equality among different producers; improve and perfect the information, control and incentive mechanism, reduce the transaction cost; it should lay down contract-out laws and rulers, form a more positive institutional environment.