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Screening ex-ante or screening on-the-job? The impact of the employment contract

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  • Pinoli, Sara

Abstract

This paper studies how employers collect information about the quality of workers. Two are the strategies: screening ex-ante, through the recruitment process, and monitoring new hires at work, or screening on-the-job. Using two datasets representative of workers in Great Britain, we provide empirical evidence that the optimal choice is related to the type of employment contract offered by the .rm. Our estimates show that temporary workers are associated with lower recruitment effort - in terms of lower cost and higher speed - and closer monitoring than permanent employees. But this relation depends crucially on the type of jobs. Differences in screening effort are substantial for low-level occupations, while the gap is marginal or not significant for high-skilled jobs.

Suggested Citation

  • Pinoli, Sara, 2008. "Screening ex-ante or screening on-the-job? The impact of the employment contract," MPRA Paper 11429, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:11429
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Sengul, Gonul, 2017. "Learning about match quality: Information flows and labor market outcomes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 118-130.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fixed-term contracts; Recruitment; Monitoring;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs

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