Temporary/Permanent Workers' Wage Gap: A Brand‐new Form of Wage Inequality?

Elia, Leandro

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9914.2010.00478.x

Cited by 13 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Alternatively, for those in the two other educational groups, the coefficient for temporary jobs is clearly smaller in magnitude for lower quantiles and it approximates a flat line around zero above the 60th percentile. This may support the notion that the nature of temporary job is different for skilled and unskilled workers as in Elia ()…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 70%

“…The sticky floor hypothesis could arise if rents are proportionally larger at the bottom of the wage distribution. Sticky floor may also be in line with the insider/outsider approach, which hypothesizes a negative effect of relaxing EPL for temporary contracts on wage differentials in a rigid labour market (Comi and Grasseni, ; Elia, ). This is consistent with an economy in which collective bargaining is more important for setting relatively low wages and in which unions are willing to accept low wages for temporary workers in exchange for higher permanent workers' wages.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Several major reforms have been promoted on the subject: the so‐called Treu package (law 196/1997), which legalized and regulated the supply of temporary workers by authorized agency (Ichino et al ., ) and liberalized the use of fixed‐term contracts; the Decree Law No. 368/2001, which eased restrictions on the use of fixed‐term contracts, and the Biagi law, which in 2003 introduced new flexible contracts and reformed the apprenticeship contracts to improve the matching process between demand and supply in the labour market (Elia, ). In response to this process, temporary employment in Italy has quickly grown from less than 10 per cent in the early 1990s to approximately 14 per cent of the workforce in the 2008.…”

Section: Institutional Background and Temporary Employmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Implications of Temporary Jobs on the Distribution of Wages in Italy: An Unconditional IVQTE Approach

Bosio

2013

Labour

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using Italian data, this paper investigates the wage implications of temporary jobs across the whole pay profile using unconditional quantile regression (UQR) models. Results clearly indicate that the wage penalty associated to temporary jobs is significantly larger at the bottom of wage profile and is almost absent for high-wage jobs. This is in line with the sticky floors hypothesis, supporting the idea that the wage gap for temporary employees depends on their position in the wage distribution for low-paid jobs. To recover a causal interpretation, I employ an instrumental variable (IV) strategy. I adopt the unconditional instrumental variable quantile treatment effects (IVQTE) estimator proposed by Frolich and Melly, which corrects for endogenous selection in temporary contracts. The IVQTE estimates yield similar results to standard UQR, even if the wage penalty is larger in size at the bottom of the wage distribution and disappears at the top quantiles. This evidence highlights that policies aimed at increasing flexibility may reinforce the two-tier nature of the Italian labour market and the relative wage inequality.I would like to thank Marco Leonardi, Blaise Melly, Matteo Picchio, Massimiliano Bratti, Fabio Parisi, and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Institutional Background and Temporary Employmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Implications of Temporary Jobs on the Distribution of Wages in Italy: An Unconditional IVQTE Approach

Bosio

2013

Labour

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…either measured by objective (Booth et al 2002;Giesecke and Grob 2004) or subjective standards (Burgoon and Dekker 2010). Indeed, a large body of research associates temporary employment with lower job satisfaction (Petrongolo 2004), less access to fringe benefits (OECD 2002), reduced job security (Gash and McGinnity 2007), negative health effects (Virtanen et al 2005;, social fragmentation, isolation and mental problems (Erlinghagen 2008) andÁ especiallyÁ lower wages compared with permanent employment Elia 2010). However, some authors argue that the use of flexible working arrangements serves as a bridge to permanent employment for jobseekers (Atkinson et al 1996).…”

Section: Understanding Temporary Employmentmentioning

confidence: 98%

The European World of Temporary Employment

Lancker

2011

European Societies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Departing from growing concerns about in-work poverty and the proliferation of flexible employment, we investigate the association between temporary employment and poverty in a European comparative perspective. In doing so, we focus specifically on possible gender dimensions, because some are concerned that the impact of flexible employment on income security will be different for men and women and that gender inequality will increase. By means of a logistic multilevel model, we analyse recent EU-SILC data for 24 European countries. The results show that the temporarily employed have a higher poverty risk vis-à-vis permanent workers, mainly caused by lower wages. However, the risk factors to become working poor are similar. The poorly educated, young workers and those living in a single earner household with dependent children have an increased probability to live in poverty, whether they are employed on temporary or permanent basis. Differences between European welfare regimes demonstrate that policy constellations influence the magnitude of these risk factors. Counterintuitively, temporary working women have a lower poverty risk than their male counterparts. They are better protected because they are more often secondary earners in a dual earning household, while men are more often primary earners. This article advances knowledge on the linkages between temporary employment, economic insecurity and gender differences in European welfare states.

show abstract

“… Elia () used the 2003 reform as an instrument to test how the wage gap for permanent–temporary workers changed after that break, finding a positive effect on this gap stronger for skilled workers. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Wage Contracts, Temporary Jobs, and Firm Performance: Evidence From Italian Firms

Battisti

Vallanti

2013

Industrial Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study focuses on the effects of decentralized wage schemes and temporary forms of employment on firm performance. The effect of monetary incentives on workers' effort and firm performance is a central topic in economics. According to the principal-agent paradigm, firms (the principal) have to link employees' remuneration schemes to any verifiable indicator of performance to avoid opportunistic behavior. The empirical evidence shows that financial incentives have the potential to exert strong effects on indicators of firm performance, such as productivity and worker absenteeism, although the degree of effectiveness of such schemes varies significantly according to the institutional/economic context in which firms operate. From both a theoretical and empirical point of view, the prediction on the effects of temporary types of employment on effort and productivity is less neat. In light of these considerations, this study uses a sample of Italian firms to provide further empirical evidence on whether and to what extent performance-related pay schemes and contract flexibility affect workers' effort (in terms of absenteeism) and, in turn, firm productivity. These effects are analyzed for different types of workers (white collar vs. blue collar), working in workplaces characterized by a different degree of uncertainty and risk and in firms operating in different economic and institutional settings. Our results show that wage flexibility has a significant effect on effort and then on firm's productivity and that white-collar workers are more responsive to monetary incentives than blue-collar workers. Moreover, the presence of a large share of temporary contracts, implying a lower dismissal probability for permanent workers and a deterioration of the working environment, appears to reduce workers' motivation and effort.

show abstract

Temporary/Permanent Workers' Wage Gap: A Brand‐new Form of Wage Inequality?

Cited by 13 publications

References 23 publications

The Implications of Temporary Jobs on the Distribution of Wages in Italy: An Unconditional IVQTE Approach

The Implications of Temporary Jobs on the Distribution of Wages in Italy: An Unconditional IVQTE Approach

The European World of Temporary Employment

Flexible Wage Contracts, Temporary Jobs, and Firm Performance: Evidence From Italian Firms

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About