Seminar "25 years of temporary employment"

Temporary employment sparked across the two sides of the Atlantic over the last twenty-five years, and is now a common feature of most OECD countries. It may be a port of entry to the labor market, and allow employers to respond to changes in demand, but it may also become a dead end and involve significant productivity losses for firms. There is a large body of empirical literature on the spread of temporary employment, but no systematic review of its findings. While there is a huge theoretical literature on the effects of employment protection legislation, much less attention has been devoted to develop an analytical framework capturing the key characteristics of temporary employment, and offering guidance to empirical research and policy-making. This paper aims at bridging this gap by offering a macro framework to interpret the findings of the literature, reviewing the most relevant empirical results in light of the predictions of the theory, and highlighting their policy implications.