Does relaxing the regulation of fixed-term contracts improve workers' subsequent employment prospects? We evaluate the effects of the Italian Decreto Poletti (2014), which abolished the causality requirement for fixed-term contracts, extended their maximum duration and increased the number of permitted renewals. Exploiting the reform as a quasi-natural experiment, we compare workers exposed to the new legislation with propensity score matched workers observed under the previous regulatory framework and estimate discrete-time hazard models for job and employment duration. We find no systematic evidence that the reform affected either job security or employment security, either on average or across demographic and firm-specific subgroups.
