Temporary agency employment has grown steadily in most European countries over the past three decades as part of the general trend towards increased employment flexibility. Yet to this day, it remains an open question what drives the demand for temporary agency workers. The paper examines,...

Temporary agency employment has grown steadily in most European countries over the past three decades as part of the general trend towards increased employment flexibility. Yet to this day, it remains an open question what drives the demand for temporary agency workers. The paper examines,...

Based on a number of 'deviation measures', Kim (1996) finds that postwar US consumption deviates from the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) by only around 4 percent. In the present paper we investigate in more detail the extent to which the PIH provides a good approximation to US consumption...