This paper studies gender differences in the extent to which social preferences affect workers' shirking decisions. Using exogenous variation in work absence induced by a randomized field experiment that increased treated workers' absence, we find that also non-treated workers increased their...

The effect of economic incentives on worker absenteeism is analyzed using panel data on work absence behavior for each day during 1990 and 1991 (i.e. 730 observations in the time dimension) for a representative sample of 1,396 Swedish blue collar workers. During the observed time period, a major...

This study investigates possible reasons for the gender difference in sickness absence. We estimate both short- and long-term effects of parenthood in a within-couple analysis based on the timing of parenthood. We find that after entering parenthood, women increase their sickness absence by...