Structural Empirical Analysis of Vacancy Referrals with Imperfect Monitoring and the Strategic Use of Sickness Absence

Gerard J. van den Berg (), Hanno Foerster and Arne Uhlendorff
Additional contact information
Gerard J. van den Berg: University of Groningen

No 16495, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper provides a structural analysis of the role of job vacancy referrals (VRs) by public employment agencies in the job search behavior of unemployed individuals, incorporating institutional features of the monitoring of search behavior by the agencies. Notably, rejections of VRs may lead to sanctions (temporary benefits reductions) while workers may report sick to avoid those. We estimate models using German administrative data from social security records linked with caseworker recorded data on VRs, sick reporting and sanctions. The analysis highlights the influence of aspects of the health care system on unemployment durations. We estimate that for around 25% of unemployed workers, removing the channel that enables strategic sick reporting reduces the mean unemployment duration by 4 days.

Keywords: physician; sickness absence; moral hazard; sanctions; wage; unemployment; structural estimation; counterfactual policy evaluation; unemployment duration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 C54 J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2023-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16495.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Structural Empirical Analysis of Vacancy Referrals with Imperfect Monitoring and the Strategic Use of Sickness Absence (2023)
Working Paper: Structural Empirical Analysis of Vacancy Referrals With Imperfect Monitoring and the Strategic Use of Sickness Absence (2019)
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:iza:izadps:dp16495

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().