FIXED - TERM EMPLOYMENT AND EMPLOYMENT ELASTICITY: EVIDENCE FROM THE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
This paper focuses on fixed-term employment in the European countries, its trends and conditions, as well as controversies regarding its significance for flexibility of employment. Statistical data show that fixed-term employment significantly increased its share in total employment in many European countries in the last quarter century. The reasons of this trend can be sought in the lower labour cost of this type of employment, and the ease with which this group of employees can be dismissed, which was in part a result of the relaxed legal protection of fixed-term employment in the recent years. Analyses indicate that the increase in the share of fixed-term employment affect employment elasticity nonlinearly according to the shape of the letter U.