SOCIAL INTERACTIONS AT THE WORKPLACE: EXPLORING SICKNESS ABSENCE BEHAVIOR

Karsten Marshall Elseth Rieck () and Kjell Vaage
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Karsten Marshall Elseth Rieck: Department of Economics, University of Bergen, http://www.uib.no/econ/en

No 11/12, Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate whether a worker’s sickness absence is affected by her colleagues’ absences from the workplace. The analysis is based on unique matched employer-employee data for Norwegian schoolteachers for the period 2001 to 2006 with information on different types of absences and multiple teacher and school characteristics. Using different approaches where methodological problems such as the reflection problem and intra-group correlation are mitigated, we look for evidence of social interaction effects. Our results show that the significance of the social interaction effects critically depends on our ability to control for unobserved school characteristics.

Keywords: Social interaction; peer effects; sickness absence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C31 H55 I38 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2012-08-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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