Firms' Sickness Costs and Workers' Sickness Absences / René Böheim, Thomas Leoni.

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Böheim, René

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w20305.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: In many countries, social security insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. The insurance may create a moral hazard for firms, leading to inefficient monitoring of absences or to an underinvestment in the prevention of absences. We exploit an administrative threshold in the Austrian social security that defined whether a firm had to pay a deductible for its blue-collar workers sicknesses or not. The quasi-experimental situation around the threshold provides causal evidence on the extent of moral hazard induced by the deductible. We apply a regression discontinuity design to estimate the differences in the incidences and durations of sicknesses for firms that faced the deductible and those who did not. We find that the deductible did not lead to different sickness outcomes and conclude that relatively low deductibles have little impact on forms' management of sicknesses.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w20305 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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July 2014.

In many countries, social security insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. The insurance may create a moral hazard for firms, leading to inefficient monitoring of absences or to an underinvestment in the prevention of absences. We exploit an administrative threshold in the Austrian social security that defined whether a firm had to pay a deductible for its blue-collar workers sicknesses or not. The quasi-experimental situation around the threshold provides causal evidence on the extent of moral hazard induced by the deductible. We apply a regression discontinuity design to estimate the differences in the incidences and durations of sicknesses for firms that faced the deductible and those who did not. We find that the deductible did not lead to different sickness outcomes and conclude that relatively low deductibles have little impact on forms' management of sicknesses.