This paper evaluates the impact of agency work on temporary workers' posterior likelihood of being hired on a permanent basis. We use administrative data on two groups of temporary workers for whom we have complete work histories since they are first observed in 1998 until the year 2004. One...

The poor performance often attributed to many public employment services may be explained in part by a delegation problem between the central office and local job centers. In markets characterized by frictions, job centers function as match-makers, linking job seekers with relevant vacancies....

Our paper analyzes the role of public employment agencies in job matching, in particular the effects of the restructuring of the Federal Employment Agency in Germany (Hartz III labor market reform) for aggregate matching and unemployment. Based on two microeconomic datasets, we show that the...

Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) are entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved. This paper offers a conceptual foundation for...

This paper examines whether contacts between caseworkers in public employment offices and employers impact on the reemployment chances of the unemployed they counsel. This analysis is made possible through a large administrative dataset on unemployed combined with an extensive survey of...

We evaluate a randomized experiment of a statistical support system developed to assist caseworkers in Swiss employment offices in choosing appropriate active labour market programmes for their unemployed clients. This statistical support system predicted the labour market outcome for each...

In the US almost 3 per cent of employees are absent from their job for reasons other than vacation, but are still technically employed. We argue that firms may find optimal to use temporary replacement workers to fill these vacant positions. We set up a matching model with directed search and...

Temporary employment contracts are often regarded as 'stepping stones' for workers' careers, because they can help inexperienced workers secure a permanent contract. Our study evaluates whether this stepping-stone function is moderated by the contract duration, exploiting a Dutch policy reform...

Firms frequently provide general skill training to workers at the firm's cost. Theories proposed that labor market frictions entails wage compression, larger productivity gain than wage growth to skill acquisition, and motivates a firm to offer opportunities for skill acquisition, but few...