Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

No 2002:13: Assessing the effect of public policy on worker absenteeism

Per Johansson () and Mårten Palme ()
Additional contact information
Per Johansson: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Mårten Palme: Stockholm School of Economics, Postal: P O Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: We analyze the effect of economic incentives on worker absenteeism, using panel data on work absence for 1990 and 1991 with a sample of 1,396 Swedish blue-collar workers. During this period Sweden implemented major reforms of both its national income replacement program for short-term sickness and income taxes. Both affected the worker's cost of missing work. Our econometric model allows for state-dependent dynamic behavior and control for unobserved heterogeneity. The latter proves to be an important consideration. We find that the cost of being absent significantly affects work absence behavior.

Keywords: Sickness insurance; unobserved heterogeneity; logit regression

JEL-codes: J22

29 pages, June 30, 2001

Full text files

wp02-13.pdf PDF-file 

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ali Ghooloo ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-05 17:11:48.