Absenteeism, Efficiency Wages and Shirking

Barmby, Tim; Sessions, John G.; Treble, John G.

doi:10.2307/3440797

Cited by 132 publications

(135 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…17 See for example Barmby et al (1994) who indicate that the effect of absence behavior on the probability of being fired may act as a worker discipline device. (1)), then the effect of the firing rate on the probability of reporting a moderate accident is not significantly different from zero.…”

Section: Does Reporting An Accident Increase the Subsequent Firing Rate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 For instance, in the EU-15 in 2004 there were around 4 million occupational accidents leading to more than 3 days' absence from work, which is equivalent to an accident rate of 3.2%. The total number of accidents, including those which did not involve absence from work amounted to 6.4 million, equivalent to an accident rate of 5.3%.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 However, Boone and Van Ours (2006) provide an alternative explanation related to 1 According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work a workplace accident is defined as a "discrete occurrence in the course of work, which leads to physical or mental harm". A fatal accident is defined as an accident, which leads to the death of a victim within 1 year (after the day) of the accident.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Recessions are bad for workplace safety

Boone¹,

Ours²,

Wuellrich³

et al. 2011

Journal of Health Economics

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Workplace accidents are an important economic phenomenon. Yet, the pro-cyclical fluctuations in workplace accidents are not well understood. They could be related to fluctuations in effort and working hours, but workplace accidents may also be affected by reporting behavior. Our paper uses unique data on workplace accidents from an Austrian matched worker-firm dataset to study in detail how economic incentives affect workplace accidents. We find that workers who reported an accident in a particular period of time are more likely to be fired later on. And, we find support for the idea that recessions influence the reporting of moderate workplace accidents: if workers think the probability of dismissals at the firm level is high, they are less likely to report a moderate workplace accident.

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Section: Does Reporting An Accident Increase the Subsequent Firing Rate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recessions are bad for workplace safety

Boone¹,

Ours²,

Wuellrich³

et al. 2011

Journal of Health Economics

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show abstract

“…We extend and build upon a mix of standard work-leisure models to theoretically study the absence behavior of workers (Brown 1994;Barmby et al 1994;Brown and Sessions 1996;Gilleskie 1998).…”

Section: Identifying Contagious Presenteeism and Negative Externalitimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although related and sometimes combined in laws, sick pay schemes differ crucially from maternity 1 Other papers in the literature on sickness absence looked at and decomposed general determinants (Barmby et al 1994;Markussen et al 2011), investigated the impact of probation periods (Riphahn 2004;Ichino and Riphahn 2005), culture (Ichino and Maggi 2000), gender (Ichino and Moretti 2009;Gilleskie 2010), income taxes (Dale-Olsen 2013), and unemployment (Askildsen et al 2005;Nordberg and Røed 2009;Pichler 2015). There is also research on the impact of sickness on earnings (Sandy and Elliott 2005;Markussen 2012). leave schemes (Gruber 1994;Ruhm 1998;Waldfogel 1998;Rossin-Slater et al 2013;Lalive et al 2014;Carneiro et al 2015;Thomas 2015) due to the negative externalities induced by contagious presenteeism in combination with information asymmetries between employers and employees about the type and extent of the employee's disease.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pros and Cons of Sick Pay Schemes: Testing for Contagious Presenteeism and Shirking Behavior

Pichler¹,

Ziebarth²

2015

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This paper proposes a test for the existence and degree of contagious presenteeism and negative externalities in sickness insurance schemes. First, we theoretically decompose moral hazard into shirking and contagious presenteeism behavior and derive testable conditions. Then, we implement the test exploiting German sick pay reforms and administrative industry-level data on certified sick leave by diagnoses. The labor supply adjustment for contagious diseases is significantly smaller than for noncontagious diseases. Lastly, using Google Flu data and the staggered implementation of U.S. sick leave reforms, we show that flu rates decrease after employees gain access to paid sick leave. JEL Classification Codes: I12, I13, I18, J22, J28, J32

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Sickness Absence, Moral Hazard, and the Business Cycle

Pichler

2014

Health Economics

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The procyclical nature of sickness absence has been documented by many scholars in literature. So far, explanations have been based on labor force composition and reduced moral hazard caused by fear of job loss during recessions. In this paper, we propose and test a third mechanism caused by reduced moral hazard during booms and infections. We suggest that the workload is higher during economic booms and thus employees have to go to work despite being sick. In a theoretical model focusing on infectious diseases, we show that this will provoke infections of coworkers leading to overall higher sickness absence during economic upturns. Using state-level aggregated data from 112 German public health insurance funds (out of 145 in total), we find that sickness absence due to infectious diseases shows the largest procyclical pattern, as predicted by our theoretical model.

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Absenteeism, Efficiency Wages and Shirking

Cited by 132 publications

References 8 publications

Recessions are bad for workplace safety

Recessions are bad for workplace safety

The Pros and Cons of Sick Pay Schemes: Testing for Contagious Presenteeism and Shirking Behavior

Sickness Absence, Moral Hazard, and the Business Cycle

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