Coming to work while sick: An economic theory of presenteeism with an application to German data

Boris Hirsch, Daniel Lechmann and Claus Schnabel

VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Presenteeism, i.e. attending work while sick, is widespread and associated with significant costs. Still, economic analyses of this phenomenon are rare. In a theoretical model, we show that presenteeism arises due to differences between workers in the disutility from workplace attendance. As these differences are unobservable by employers, they set wages that incentivise sick workers to attend work. Using a large representative German data set, we test several hypotheses derived from our model. In line with our predictions, we find that stressful working conditions and bad health status are positively related to presenteeism. Better dismissal protection, captured by higher tenure, is associated with slightly fewer presenteeism days, whereas the role of productivity and skills is inconclusive.

JEL-codes: I19 J22 J29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-hrm
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/145478/1/VfS_2016_pid_6258.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Coming to work while sick: an economic theory of presenteeism with an application to German data (2017)
Working Paper: Coming to Work While Sick: An Economic Theory of Presenteeism with an Application to German Data (2015)
Working Paper: Coming to work while sick: An economic theory of presenteeism with an application to German data (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145478

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