In a globally competitive market place companies strive to become as efficient as possible. Absenteeism is a worldwide problem as it impacts on company efficiency and cost effectiveness. A large portion of absenteeism can be attributed to ill health absences. Companies have prioritized the need...

Using matched employer-employee data for Italy and newly available information on sick leaves certificates, we study the effect of an exogenous increase in the length of the residual work horizon – triggered by a pension reform that increased minimum retirement age - on middle-aged employees'...

This article examines the effect of self-management support on long-term sickness absence. The intervention offers information and strategies aimed at enhancing individuals’ confidence in their own ability to deal with sickness absence. Using survey and administrative data linked to a...

We empirically analyze the effects of employee lateness and absenteeism on store performance by examining 25.5 million employee shift timecards covering more than 100,000 employees across more than 500 U.S. retail grocery store locations over a four year time period. We first document that both...

We use employment data from the Current Population Survey to assess the efficacy of state-mandated paid sick leave policies on leave-taking behavior with a focus on any variation by gender. We find that these policies increase leave taking for care-giving for men by 10-20%, and this effect is...

Lack of access to sanitation is hindering adolescent girls’ schooling in lower income countries. We measure the causal impact of different sanitary technologies on secondary schoolgirls’ absences and psychosocial well-being in Kenya. We compare a simple, disposable product with a complex,...

This paper investigates the impact of opening the labor market to qualified immigrants who hold fully equivalent diplomas as natives and share the same mother tongue. Leveraging the 2002 opening of the Swiss labor market to qualified workers from the European Union, we show that the policy led...

The prevalence of school-based healthcare has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based healthcare, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care. School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs)...

Using matched employer-employee data for Italy and newly available information on sick leaves certificates, we study the effect of an exogenous increase in the length of the residual work horizon - triggered by a pension reform that increased minimum retirement age - on middle-aged employees'...

Menstruation can limit female labor force participation, especially in low-income countries, where menstrual hygiene practices are constrained by lack of finances and information. In a randomized controlled trial with around 1,900 female workers from four Bangladeshi garment factories, we relax...

How do temporary spells of absence from work affect individuals' labor trajectory? To answer this question, we augment a 'wage ladder' model, in which individuals receive alternative take-it-or-leave-it wage offers from firms and potentially suffer accidents which may push them into temporary...

How do temporary spells of absence from work affect individuals' labor trajectory? To answer this question, we augment a 'wage ladder' model, in which individuals receive alternative take-it-or-leave-it wage offers from firms and potentially suffer accidents which may push them into temporary...

Despite a significant amount of academic interest in politicians, there is little empirical research on the impact of their absence on the air quality in the areas under their jurisdiction. This study therefore examines the impact of city leaders’ absence on local air quality. Using...

Until now very little work has been done to estimate the effect of wildfire smoke on employment. This paper starts to address that gap. Smoke data from the NOAA Hazard Mapping System, Smoke and Fire Product is matched to data on employment and hours worked from the Current Population Survey at...

Group-based incentive pay is attractive in contexts where production is complex and interdependent, yet freeriding is a paramount concern. We assess the introduction of group-based performance pay in a modern industrial production setting using difference-in-difference estimation. Performance...

We investigate the impact on work absence of a massive reduction in paid sick leave benefits. We exploit a policy change that only affected public sector workers in Spain and compare changes in the number and length of spells they take relative to unaffected private sector workers. Our results...

Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish...

Many workers admit that at times they show up for work even though they feel sick. This behavior, termed "presenteeism," is puzzling since most workers do not incur financial losses when staying home sick. The various reasons behind presenteeism are person-related (e.g. individuals' health or...

As vaccines for Covid-19 became available, in 2021 many countries introduced an obligation for employees to provide proof of their Covid status in the workplace, in Germany also known as the 3G rule (vaccinated, recovered, tested). In view of the controversial debate, concerns arose that...

Student absenteeism is often conceptualized and quantied in a static, uniform manner, providing an incomplete understanding of this important phenomenon. Applying growth curve models to detailed class-attendance data, we document that secondary school students' unexcused absences grow steadily...

In light of the dramatic rise in mental health disorders among adolescents seen in the past decade across the world, there is an urgent need for robust evidence on what works to combat this trend. This paper provides the first robust evaluation of the impacts on school outcomes of 6-year funding...

We study how firms respond to predictable, but uncertain, worker absences arising from maternity and non-work-related sickness leave. Using administrative data on over 1.5 million spells of leave in Brazil, we identify the short-run effects of a leave spell starting on firms' employment, hiring,...

We study how workers in production teams are affected by the temporary absence and replacement of a coworker. When a substitute coworker is absent, the remaining coworkers produce less output per working time. They compensate for this by increasing their working time at the expense of the (less...

We study how workers in production teams are affected by the temporary absence and replacement of a coworker. When a substitute coworker is absent, the remaining coworkers produce less output per working time. They compensate for this by increasing their working time at the expense of the (less...