IET open seminar “The effect of temporary contracts on wages: Evidence from comparative analyses”

Abstract
Temporary contracts have become widespread in industrialized nations and many concerns have been raised about the implications for inequality in the labor market. Various socio-economic consequences have been studied in the literature. This presentation focuses on the consequences of temporary contracts on wages and wage trajectories in different institutional and structural contexts. It is based on findings from the ERC-StG project SECCOPA (https://seccopa.de/). Empirical evidence from two studies is presented. First, results from multilevel analyses of the wage gap between temporary and permanent employees across 30 countries are shown, which highlight the heterogeneity of the wage gap across age and occupational groups and its correlation with macro indicators of institutional and structural labor market dualism. Second, results from comparative panel data analyses for eight countries underline the importance of differentiating types of employment transitions and studying their impact on wage trajectories in a longitudinal perspective. This study also finds stronger wage effects in countries characterized by dualized institutional contexts.

Biography
Michael Gebel is Full Professor of Methods of Empirical Social Research at the University of Bamberg. He graduated in economics and social sciences, and earned his doctoral degree in sociology at the University of Mannheim. He held a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant in 2018-23. He is board member of the European Consortium of Sociological Research (ECSR) and associate editor of the journal European Sociological Review (ESR). His research interests include life course research, multilevel analysis of international comparative microdata and methods of modern causal analysis. The open seminar is organized by the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Life Course Studies (IET) and is funded by the European Union Regional Development Fund (ASTRA project “TLU TEE Tallinn University as a promoter of intelligent lifestyle”).