Successful return to work during labor market liberalization: the case of Italian injured workers

Monica Galizzi (), Roberto Leombruni () and Lia Pacelli ()
Additional contact information
Monica Galizzi: University of Massachusetts Lowell
Roberto Leombruni: University of Torino
Lia Pacelli: University of Torino

Journal for Labour Market Research, 2019, vol. 53, issue 1, 1-24

Abstract: Abstract We investigate the long term employment outcomes of Italian injured workers over a time period when the country introduced policy reforms that increased labor market flexibility but reduced job security. Using an employer-employee database matched with injury data, we observe that both before and after the reforms almost one-fourth of injured workers were no longer employed 3 years after their “first” return to work. We note a slight decrease in this share after the reforms (from 24 to 22%) while we find a decline in workers’ job security as measured by their probability of re-employment in permanent contracts. We use multinomial logit estimates to study how liberalization reforms were associated with a changing role of individual, firm, and injury characteristics in shaping long-term employment outcomes of injured workers after their recovery period. Heterogeneity analyses show that low wage employees, women, immigrants, and individuals who suffered a more severe injury were penalized more. Pre-injury individual characteristics became stronger predictors of long-term employment than firms’ characteristics. In particular, we find that the advantage provided by working in larger firms was significant before the liberalization reforms, but disappeared afterward, while the advantage provided by human capital became more relevant after the liberalization.

Keywords: Occupational injuries; Return to work; Maximum medical improvement; Deregulation; Multinomial logit; Matched employer-employee data; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J28 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s12651-019-0260-5 Abstract (text/html)

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:spr:jlabrs:v:53:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1186_s12651-019-0260-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/12651

DOI: 10.1186/s12651-019-0260-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal for Labour Market Research is currently edited by Joachim Möller

More articles in Journal for Labour Market Research from Springer, Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().