Employment Protection and Sickness Absence

Martin Olsson

No 717, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: An exemption in the Swedish Employment Security Act (LAS) in 2001 made it possible for employers with a maximum of ten employees to exempt two workers from the seniority rule at times of redundancies. Using this within-country enforcement variation, the relationship between employment protection and sickness absence among employees is examined. The average treatment effect from the exemption is found to decrease sickness absence by more than 13 percent at those establishments that were treated relative to those that were not and this was due to a behavioral, rather than a compositional, effect. The results suggest that the exemption had the largest impact on shorter spells and among establishments with a relatively low share of females or temporary contracts.

Keywords: Employment Protection; Sickness Absence; Economic Incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I19 J63 J88 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2007-09-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Labour Economics, 2009, pages 208-214.

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Journal Article: Employment protection and sickness absence (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0717

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