Does Temporary Help Work Provide a Stepping Stone to Regular Employment?

This paper has benefited from valuable comments by David Autor, Ronald Bachmann, Stefan Bender, Michael C. Burda, Andrea Ichino, Elke Jahn, Barbara Sianesi, Axel Werwatz and participants of the 2004 EALE conference in Lisbon, the 2004 meeting of the Verein für Socialpolitik in Dresden, a CEPR workshop on temporary agency work in Berlin in 2005, the 2005 EEA conference in Amsterdam, the 2005 ESPE conference in Paris, and the 2007 NBER Conference on Labor Market Intermediation. I would like to thank the Institute of Employment Research (IAB of the Federal Employment Agency who has made the data for this project available. Financial support by the German Research Foundation, the EU-funded CEPR research network 'A Dynamic Approach to Europe's Unemployment Problem', and the Collaborative Research Center 649 on Economic Risk at Humboldt University Berlin is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are my own. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.