From Temporary Help Jobs to Permanent Employment: What Can We Learn from Matching Estimators and their Sensitivity?

Andrea Ichino, Fabrizia Mealli () and Tommaso Nannicini ()

No 5736, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The diffusion of Temporary Work Agency (TWA) jobs originated a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the US, based on quasi-experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the Conditional Independence Assumption (CIA), typically reach opposite conclusions. Using data for two Italian regions, we use a matching estimator to show that TWA assignments can be an effective springboard to permanent employment. We also propose a simulation-based sensitivity analysis, which highlights that only for one of these two regions our results are robust to specific failures of the CIA. We conclude that European studies based on the CIA should not be automatically discarded, but should be put under the scrutiny of a sensitivity analysis like the one we propose.

Keywords: matching estimators; temporary work agencies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C2 C8 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2006-07
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP5736.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: From Temporary Help Jobs to Permanent Employment: What Can We Learn from Matching Estimators and their Sensitivity? (2006)
Journal Article: From temporary help jobs to permanent employment: what can we learn from matching estimators and their sensitivity? (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5736

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP5736.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().