Escaping social pressure: Fixed-term contracts in multi-establishment firms

Financing Constraints and Fixed-Term Employment Contracts

The aim of this paper is to identify the effect of financing constraints on the employment decisions of firms. We present a theoretical model that determines the optimal use of fixed term and permanent contracts in the presence of financing constraints. We then estimate the effect of financing constraints on the dynamics of fixed-term employment contracts versus permanent employment contracts f...

Education, Earnings, and Fixed-Term Contracts

We explore the relationship between education, earnings and fixed-term contracts using data from the 1997 British Social Attitudes Survey and the 1997 International Social Survey Programme . We find that workers employed under such contracts earn significantly lower wages than their ‘permanent’ contract counterparts, even after controlling for a plethora of personal and job characteristics. Thi...

Fixed-term employment contracts in an equilibrium search model

We develop a theoretical model of firm dynamics and unemployment and characterize equilibria with tenure dependent separation taxes. The model is a version of the Lucas and Prescott island model with undirected search. Two equivalent decentralizations are considered: one with spot labor markets and one with long-term employment relations. We model “temporary contracts" as the special case of a ...

Professional Workers and Fixed Term Contracts: a Contradiction in Terms?

Fixed-term contracts and the dynamics of labour demand

We estimate a model of labour demand that accounts for dynamics arising from the relative costs of hiring and "ring workers on either inde"nite-term contract (ITC) or "xed-term contract (FTC). We use a panel of 1000 French "rms, for which we can measure the number of entries and exits for each type of contract between 1988 and 1992. Our estimates suggest that (1) it is much more costly to lay o...