Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/69587 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 4064
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to verify the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the different degree of job security offered by the Italian Employment Protection Legislation to workers employed in small and large firms. We use a panel of administrative data (WHIP) and consider sickness absences as an empirical proxy for employee shirking. Controlling for a number of individual and firm characteristics, we investigate the relationship between worker's absences and local unemployment rate (at the provincial level). We find a strong negative impact of unemployment on absenteeism rate, which is considerable larger in small firms due to a significantly lower protection from dismissals in these firms. We also find that workers who are absent more frequently face higher risks of dismissal. As an indirect test of the role of unemployment as worker's discipline device we show that public sector employees, almost impossible to fire, do not react to the local unemployment.
Subjects: 
shirking
absenteeism
employment protection legislation
unemployment
JEL: 
J41
M51
J45
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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