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AbstractWe explore the relationship between earnings, education, and fixed‐term contracts using data from the 1997 British Social Attitudes Survey. We find that the log hourly wage of workers employed under such contracts is approximately 13% lower than that of their 'permanent' counterparts, even after controlling for a plethora of personal and job characteristics. Standard decompositions indicate that the vast majority of this differential (more than 70%) is attributable to price effects, which may reflect discrimination on the part of the employer. Such findings may, therefore, suggest that employment protection is appropriate for individuals employed under fixed‐term contracts.

We investigate the attributes of supervisors and the key correlates of the extent of their supervisory responsibilities. We find a strong correlation between wages, education, experience, firm size and the extent of supervision. One implication of this is that firms may be indifferent between employing a few, 'high responsibility' or many 'low responsibility' supervisors. Our findings, suggestive as they are of supervisory heterogeneity, should be taken into account in studies that proxy the intensity of monitoring primarily by the number of supervisors employed.

Investigates the shape of experience‐earnings profiles across gender. Given that self‐employment offers both an alternative to unemployment and potentially flexible – and thereby attractive to female labour market participants – working arrangements, estimates separate profiles for employees and self‐employees. The male results support Lazear and Moore's agency‐driven explanation for the shape of experience‐earnings profiles with self‐employment being characterized by a relatively flat profile. The estimated female employee profile is flatter than its male counterpart, a finding which lends support to the human capital explanation for gender‐specific earnings profiles, whereby females tend to withdraw from the labour market and so reduce their incentive to invest in human capital. In the case of female self‐employees, educational attainment rather than labour market experience appears to be the significant determinant of earnings.