The causes and consequences of temporary jobs in spaina theoretical-empirical approach

Résumé

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).