Wybrane problemy oceny aktywnych programów rynku pracy

Active labour market policies are still one of the major tools to fight unemployment and improve functioning of the labour market. However, growing scepticism regarding the effects of active policies and very different evaluation findings are the main reason of growing interest in developing the evalution methods of these policies. The paper outlines the key theoretical issues concerning ALMP evaluation and also intends to explain the need of evaluation of these measures, especially in countries which have just joined European Union, for example Poland. The first part describes evaluation purposes nad briefly characterizes differences between various types of evaluation. The second part covers the methodological aspects of ALMP microevalutions, defines the fundamental evaluation problem and reviews some quasiexperimental methods, commonly used in the EU -15, like before-after designs, matching and parametric regression, and conditional difference in differences estimation, uderlying their strenths and weaknesses.The last part of the article presents some problems of ALMP evaluation in Poland. The paper concludes that the main barriers of implementing evaluation system in Poland are: the lack of funds to conduct systematic evaluations, bad procedures and poorly developed information systems used by public employment services, low quality or the lack of proper statistical data needed for evaluations, and insufficient qualifications of PES’ employees to control and evaluate the effects of ALMP.