Non-Standard Employment in Irish Manufacturing: Do Firm Characteristics Matter?

JEL Classification J21

Holger Görg*, Lynn Killen** and Frances Ruane*

*Department of Economics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland and

**School of Computer Applications, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland

Abstract

Non-standard or atypical employment in Irish manufacturing more than doubled between 1987 and 1995. This paper attempts to analyse empirically the nature of non-standard employment in Ireland using plant-level data for 1995. We focus on firm characteristics as explanatory factors. Our econometric results indicate that there are significant differences in the use of atypical employment between small and large firms, and between indigenous and foreign-owned firms.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the provision of the data for this study by Forfás, and the help given by the staff of the Planning Division in Forfás in preparation of this paper. We are grateful to Eric Strobl for helpful comments. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the Irish Economic Association's conference in Athlone in April 1997 and at the II Jornadas de Economía Laboral in Bilbao in September 1997. Frances Ruane gratefully acknowledges support from the Royal Irish Academy Social Science Research Council.