Essays on temporary work
Abstract
Three essays on temporary work are presented. The first two essays examine several factors that contribute to the dramatic increase in temporary employment. The first essay develops a theoretical model to illustrate how employers experiencing fluctuations in product demand use temporary workers to maintain flexibility in their labor input and reduce cost. The essay then presents empirical evidence of the significant role temporary workers play in accommodating for demand variations. The results suggest that increases in uncertainty in product demand is partly responsible for the growth in temporary employment. Apart from hiring temporary workers as a buffer against demand shocks, some firms use temps as a way to recruit and screen prospective (permanent) employees. The second essay examines this issue by focusing on several characteristics of a position and analyzes their effect on the type of employment contract that is offered to a worker. The analysis reveals that increases in the cost of dismissal help explain the rise in temporary employment. In the third essay, the link between wages, gender and temporary work is considered. A simple model that is constructed provides an explanation for the observed differences in wages between women and men. Women, if expected to have a weaker attachment to the labor force, will be less accessible to and earn lower wages than men in high-training jobs. A key feature of temporary work, that temporary workers receive little training compared to their permanent counterparts, provides a unique way to testing for this hypothesis.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Barron, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Labor economics
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