Dismissal protection and long‐term sickness absence: Evidence from a policy change

Nicole Gürtzgen and Karolin Hiesinger

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 2025, vol. 64, issue 3, 318-342

Abstract: This paper studies whether a decline in employment protection reduces workers' long‐term sickness absences (of >6 weeks). We exploit exogenous variation from a German policy change that shifted the threshold exempting small establishments from dismissal protection from 5 to 10 workers. Using German register data, we find that the reform significantly reduced employees' transitions into long‐term sickness during their second year after being hired. This response is due to a behavioral rather than a compositional effect and is particularly pronounced among the medium‐skilled and younger males. Further results indicate that the reform did not alter the probability of involuntary unemployment after sickness.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12375

Related works:
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:bla:indres:v:64:y:2025:i:3:p:318-342

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0019-8676

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society is currently edited by Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter, Steven Raphael and stevenraphael@berkeley.edu

More articles in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().