THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF TEMPORARY JOBS IN SPAIN: A THEORETICAL-EMPIRICAL APPROACH

Antoni Cunyat () and Elena Casquel ()

Working Papers. Serie EC from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the dynamics of temporary jobs in a labor market characterized by worker heterogeneity and employment protection. We argue that segmentation in the labor market arises endogenously from the heterogeneity of workers. In this sense, we show the existence of two opposite dynamics of temporary contracts: for some type of workers temporary jobs act as stepping stones to permanent jobs, whereas other type of workers get stuck in temporary jobs. Using microdata on labor market transitions for Spain, we test and confirm the model's prediction obtaining that for more educated workers temporary contracts serve as stepping stone. By contrast, young workers, women, less educated workers and ''bad history'' workers seem to experiment a penalty and temporary contracts seem to be dead-end jobs. Moreover, we test the ''screening device hypothesis'' by introducing unobserved heterogenity. We obtain that the transition into permanency depends exclusively on the observed characteristics of workers (education, past labor history, etc). En el presente trabajo se analiza el papel jugado por los contratos temporalescomo puerta de entrada a contratos permanentes y otros estados utilizando una muestraextraída de las cinco primeras olas del Panel Europeo de Hogares. Nuestro principalresultado consiste en que hay determinados colectivos de trabajadores que permanecen“atrapados” en contratos temporales. Concretamente, trabajadores con menores niveleseducativos no sólo tienen menos probabilidades de conseguir un contrato permanentesino que además es más probable que acaben desempleados o en otro contrato temporal.Mujeres y trabajadores jóvenes tienen una alta probabilidad de acabar desempleados. Elpasado laboral de los empleados también juega un papel importante en todas lastransiciones. En este sentido, aquellos trabajadores que hayan experimentado desempleode larga duración es muy probable que acaben otra vez desempleados.

Keywords: contratos temporales; contratos permanentes; desempleo; transición. temporary contracts; permanent contracts; unemployment; transitions. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J63 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2004-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ivi:wpasec:2004-18

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