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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the state funded business counselling on firm growth.

A quasi-experimental difference-in-difference estimation of treatment effects, using a matched sample of comparable untreated firms.

Firms that have been granted counselling vouchers have a higher growth in value added than comparable untreated firms. This effect is mainly due to increased use of labour and capital, rather than increased efficiency. Results are upwardly biased due to sample selection among treated firms.

An improved strategy for identifying potential comparison firms from the pool of all firms may be necessary for further impact evaluations on business development programmes.

Policy makers may have to reconsider the programme design, since the programme currently suffer from a large potential for crowding-out, and low additional value of business counselling.

The paper uses a matching procedure in order to infer causal effects of business counselling and compares the effect of, respectively, contamination and selection on estimated impact on firm growth and survival. The data used are an original, rich micro-level data set on state investment support to businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse recruitment to sheltered employment for the disabled, with particular attention to cream skimming, i.e. whether the most able candidates are picked by programme organisers.

In this paper recruitment practices and incentive structures at the state‐owned Samhall company, Sweden's main provider of sheltered employment, are discussed. An econometric analysis is performed on a random sample of 10,000 unemployed individuals, exploring the quality of the data on disability and the determinants of recruitment to the company. The findings regarding recruitment are related to Samhall's objectives.

The findings in this paper regarding cream skimming is mixed; the prioritised groups, i.e. individuals with intellectual or psychic disabilities, are more likely to be hired than some, but not all, disability groups. Individuals without disabilities tend to be recruited by the company, which suggests creaming and is contrary to the guidelines.

The paper sees that the fact that disability tends to be difficult to define should be taken into account when recruitment practices to employment programmes for the disabled are analysed.

The paper found that objectives and screening procedures in employment programmes for the disabled should be assessed carefully in order to avoid excessive cream skimming.

The paper shows that most studies on cream skimming do not consider programmes for the disabled, although the potential for harmful cream skimming may be larger than in mainstream programmes. Unlike previous studies the role of disability characteristics for recruitment is explicitly taken into account and these are related to programme objectives.