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Given the trend towards labour market flexibility in various European countries, this article examines whether the offered type of employment contract has an impact on young people's ratings of the attractiveness of a job. It empirically assesses the notion that young people's preference for secure employment increases as they transition into adulthood. We conducted a factorial survey among a representative sample of 1,025 people aged 18-35 years old in the Netherlands. Participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical job offers. Results show that, compared with a permanent contract, the offer of a temporary contract for 3 years has a small negative effect on young adults' job ratings, whereas offers of an agency contract or an on-call contract have a large negative effect. In line with our predictions, this preference for job security is stronger for men and women who have left the parental home or who have entered parenthood. For men, we also find that their preference for job security is even stronger if they have entered a romantic relationship. These findings suggest that young adults regard insecure employment undesirable, but that, based on their overrepresentation in non-standard employment, their preferences are often not met.

Given the trend towards labour market flexibility in various European countries, this article examines whether the offered type of employment contract has an impact on young people’s ratings of the attractiveness of a job. It empirically assesses the notion that young people’s preference for secure employment increases as they transition into adulthood. We conducted a factorial survey among a representative sample of 1,025 people aged 18–35 years old in the Netherlands. Participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical job offers. Results show that, compared with a permanent contract, the offer of a temporary contract for 3 years has a small negative effect on young adults’ job ratings, whereas offers of an agency contract or an on-call contract have a large negative effect. In line with our predictions, this preference for job security is stronger for men and women who have left the parental home or who have entered parenthood. For men, we also find that their preference for job security is even stronger if they have entered a romantic relationship. These findings suggest that young adults regard insecure employment undesirable, but that, based on their overrepresentation in non-standard employment, their preferences are often not met.

With the abandonment of negotiations on a framework agreement with the EU in May 2021, the Swiss Federal Council has put the relationship between Switzerland and the EU in question. Since then, numerous suggestions on how to arrange the relationship between the two partners have been brought up. The economic consequences of these policy options are usually well-researched, but much less so their political feasibility in the Swiss and the EU political arena. The paper at hand closes this research gap by assessing the political feasibility of scenarios for the prospective Switzerland-EU relationship with help of the veto player theory. By linking both political feasibility and economic aspects of nine empirically identifiable scenarios, the continuation of the Bilateral path in conjunction with vertical institutional integration turns out to be the most promising way to advance the Switzerland-EU relationship. My results highlight the relevance of political feasibility considerations in analysing policy problems. A mere economic analysis often misses the mark and fails to render a complete picture. If expanded with a political feasibility analysis, the expected value of a policy option becomes much clearer.