Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures

Assar Lindbeck, Mårten Palme and Mats Persson ()
Additional contact information
Mats Persson: IIES, Stockholm University

No 6245, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits has become an important concern in the policy debate. It turns out that there are strong variations in absence behavior between local geographical areas, and it has been difficult to explain these variations by observable socioeconomic factors. In this paper we investigate whether such variation is related to group effects in the form of social interaction among individuals within neighborhoods. Well-known methodological problems arise when trying to answer such a question. A special feature of our attempt to deal with these problems is that we adopt several alternative approaches to identify group effects. We base the study on a rich set of Swedish panel data, and we find indications of group effects in each one of our approaches.

Keywords: reflection problem; moral hazard; work absence; sick-pay insurance; social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H56 I38 J22 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-hrm, nep-ias, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2016, 118 (1), 49-78

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https://docs.iza.org/dp6245.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures (2016)
Working Paper: Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures (2014)
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