Also, some studies identify positive impacts in situations where all the clients at some local offices are treated, with non-treated local offices as the control group (e.g. McVicar, 2010; Hainmueller, 2010; Hofmann et al., But clearly, research in this field should keep close track of possible externality effects, either within the local office administration and experimental implementation processes, or in the external labour market. A lag of two or more years between employment service delivery and its apparent impact may arise because employment services lead to entry to longer-term training by a limited proportion of the participants.