From temporary help jobs to permanent employment: what can we learn from matching estimators and their sensitivity?
利用意大利两个地区的数据，通过匹配估计量发现临时工派遣岗位可以成为通往永久就业的有效跳板，但敏感性分析表明仅在一个地区的结果稳健。
Abstract The diffusion of temporary work agency (TWA) jobs has led to a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the USA, based on quasi‐experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the conditional independence assumption (CIA), typically reach opposite conclusions. Using data for two Italian regions, we rely on a matching estimator to show that TWA assignments can be an effective springboard to permanent employment. We also propose a simulation‐based sensitivity analysis, which highlights that only for one of these two regions are our results robust to specific failures of the CIA. We conclude that European studies based on the CIA should not be automatically discarded, but should be put under the scrutiny of a sensitivity analysis like the one we propose. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.