Wages and return to work of injured workers

This is the first analysis of determinants of the return to work of injured workers in an institutional setting where workers earnings are fully compensated during the disability spell. Employers carry the costs associated to the time off work; hence they could face an incentive to put pressure on workers to shorten their leave. We use a matched employer-employees panel data merged with Italian workers compensation records. We find that even when we control for measures of commitment and job security, workers with high wages and high relative wages (who are more costly for the employer) return to work sooner.