This paper evaluates the impact on temporary agency workers' job satisfaction of a reform that considerably changed regulations covering the temporary help service sector in Germany. We isolate the causal effect of this reform by combining a difference-in-difference and matching approach and...

This paper reviews the development of temporary agency work after its deregulation in the context of the so-called Hartz reforms in Germany. The new role of agency work emerges from its enormous growth after deregulation, the intense use of agency work by big stock-listed companies and upcoming...

This study examines the potential impact of works councils and unions on the deployment of fixed-term contracts and agency temps. We report inter al. that works councils are associated with a higher number of temporary agency workers when demand volatility is high while the opposite holds for...

Over the past three decades Germany has repeatedly deregulated the law on temporary agency work by stepwise increasing the maximum period for hiring-out employees and allowing temporary work agencies to conclude fixed-term contracts. These reforms should have had an effect on the employment...

The late 19th and early 20th century British labour market experienced an influx of female clerical workers. Employers argued that female employment increased opportunities for men to advance; however, most male clerks regarded this expansion of the labour supply as a threat to their pay and...

We investigate whether the costs of job displacement differ between blue collar and white collar workers. In the short run earnings and employment losses are substantial for both groups but stronger for white collar workers. In the long run, there are only weak effects for blue collar workers...

We suggest a parsimonious dynamic agency model in which workers have status concerns. A firm is a promotion hierarchy in which a worker's status depends on past performance. We investigate the optimality of two types of promotion hierarchies: (i) internal labor markets, in which agents have a...

Following the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT), firms are likely to face increasing skill requirements. They may react either by training or hiring the new skills, or by a combination of both. We first show that ICT are indeed skill biased and we then assess the...

We study how the 2004 EU enlargement to Eastern European countries has affected employment, earnings and the sharing of home production among workers employed in the Building and Construction industry, and their wives. We use license requirements to divide workers into two groups who are more...

In this paper, we argue that important labor market phenomena can be better understood if one takes (i) the inherent incompleteness and relational nature of most employment contracts and (ii) the existence of reference-dependent fairness concerns among a substantial share of the population into...