Ole Helby Petersen

Ole Helby Petersen is a Professor at Roskilde University's Department of Social Sciences and Business, affiliated with the Roskilde School of Governance. His research focuses on public-private partnerships (PPP), public procurement, outsourcing, and transaction cost analysis. He holds editorial leadership as Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Petersen has received significant recognition including the Tietgen Prize and serves on Denmark's Public Procurement Complaint Board.

He teaches at bachelor's and master's levels in political science and public administration, covering policy areas, quantitative methods, and public sector governance. His methodological expertise spans experimental research, register data analysis, and systematic literature reviews.

Petersen's work addresses critical questions about privatization impacts on labor markets, transaction cost minimization strategies, and climate-friendly procurement policies. His recent studies highlight unequal employment consequences of contracting out and the economic implications of insourcing public services.

With over 190 research outputs and 11 active projects, his contributions include groundbreaking analyses of transaction cost expenditures, public-private innovation partnerships, and service quality comparisons between public and private providers. Petersen actively collaborates with practitioners to bridge research-practice gaps through co-produced field experiments.