Individual Transitions from Temporary to Permanent Job: What Consequences about Wage Diffences in France?

Abstract

The paper investigates individual transitions from a temporary job (CDD) to a permanent job (CDI) in France. We present the transition from a temporary job to a permanent one as a simple tournament mechanism where promotion to CDI is based on a productivity norm. The equilibrium properties of the model show that wages differences between temporary jobs and permanent ones are positively correlated with uncertainty during tournament. This particular property is tested on the French Labour Survey 1990-2002, using an endogenous switching wage model to control for the contract type selection rule. A Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition method is used to identify the relative contribution of observables and unobservables in wage differentials. Using firm size as a proxy for uncertainty we compare the differential wage decomposition between large firm tournament and small firm tournament. Our results show that, in small firms, the characteristics which contribute to the selection tend to reduce the wage dispersion between CDI and CDD by 9,3%. These results do not reject the equilibrium property of the model according to which more uncertainty during tournament reduces players' incentives and would be compensated by an increased wage gap between promoted and not promoted.