Abstract

It is often claimed that the labour market reforms of the 90 s implemented in some European countries have generated a trade-off between job opportunities and job security. However, evidence emerging from the rich economic literature on this topic is rather mixed. This project aims at contributing to this stream of research. With job search and matching theory in the background, we plan to apply survival analysis and propensity score matching methods to determine the effects of reforms on job durations. The general question is if reforms that in the 90s have created incentives to ease entry into the labour market have decreased job durations not only in the first phase of the working career, but also over longer periods of the working life. We plan to use administrative longitudinal data to compare durations of successive job spells of new entrants before and after periods of labour market reforms in Germany and Italy, taken as representative examples of radical and smooth reforms respectively. The policy relevance of the research concerns the issue of the link between employment protection and the use of flexible forms of working and its effects on the process of achieving tenure.