Mandatory Sick Pay Provision: A Labor Market Experiment

Stefan Bauernschuster, Peter Duersch, Jörg Oechssler and Radovan Vadovic ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Peter Dürsch

No 498, Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Sick-pay is a common provision in labor contracts. It insures workers against a sudden loss of income due to unexpected absences and helps them smooth consumption. Therefore, many governments find sick-pay socially desirable and choose to mandate its provision. But sick-pay is not without its problems. Not only it suffers from moral hazard but more importantly it is subject to a potentially serious adverse selection problem (higher sick-pay attracts sicker workers). In this paper we report results of an experiment which inquires to the extend and the severity of the adverse selection when sick-pay is voluntary versus when it is mandatory. Theoretically, mandating sick-pay may be effective in diminishing adverse selection. However, our data provide clean evidence that counteracting effects are more salient. Mandatory sick pay exacerbates moral hazard problems by changing fairness perceptions and, as a consequence, increases sick pay provision far above the mandatory levels.

Keywords: sick pay; sick leave; experiment; gift exchange. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 C9 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cta, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-lab
Note: This paper is part of http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/view/schriftenreihen/sr-3.html
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-105430 Frontdoor page on HeiDOK (text/html)
https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver ... uster_2010_dp498.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Mandatory sick pay provision: A labor market experiment (2010)
Working Paper: Mandatory Sick Pay Provision: A Labor Market Experiment (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:awi:wpaper:0498

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabi Rauscher ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).