Short-term contracts: trap or stepping stone toward stable employment?

Pauline Givord and Lionel Wilner

Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers from Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques

Abstract: This paper focuses on labor market transitions and especially on those involving fixed-term contracts. Our contribution is twofold: first, we provide an accurate measure of labor market transitions and focus on transitions from fixed-term contracts to open-ended contracts or unemployment (dealing with the "stepping-stone or dead-end" question) ; second, we analyze the potential incentive effect of fixed-term contracts on “effort”. To deal with unobserved heterogeneity, we use a dynamic multinomial logit with fixed effects. We estimate the model on the French Labor Force Survey (2002-2008) which provides detailed information on quarterly transitions. We construct an indicator of effort for fixed-term workers based on a “compared” weekly working time. We find that fixed-term contracts provide slightly better perspectives than unemployment. However, we don't find evidence of any significant impact of “working more” on the probability of getting an open-ended contract.

Keywords: Fixed-term contracts; effort; transitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J41 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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https://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/bc6p06zqzq6/f1.pdf Document de travail de la DESE numéro G2009/04 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Fixed-Term Contracts, Incentives and Effort (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nse:doctra:g2009-04

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