Voluntary Mobility of Employees for Better Job Opportunities Given a Temporary Contract : Insights Regarding an Age-Varying Association between the Two Events

What mechanisms govern the mobility of employees who voluntarily switch employers for better opportunities, given a temporary contract? We attempt to answer this question by exploring this issue in Southern and Central European countries. We use cross-sectional data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey for the 2005--2016 period. We estimate a flexible simultaneous equation model for binary responses by assuming the presence of an age-varying association between voluntary mobility and having a temporary contract. After accounting for several socio-demographic and economic variables, we find a non-linear decreasing relation between age and the outcomes, while we detect heterogeneous non-linear patterns in the association between voluntary mobility and having a temporary contract across countries. These insights can support policy-makers aiming to promote initiatives that facilitate the professional mobility of employees given a temporary contract for an efficient allocation of human capital in the production system