Hesselius, Patrik () (Institute for Labour Market policy Evaluation) Johansson, Per () (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation) Nilsson, Peter () (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation)
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We utilize a large-scale randomized social experiment to identify how coworkers affect each other’s effort as measured by work absence. The experiment altered the work absence incentives for half of all employees living in Göteborg, Sweden. Using administrative data we are able to recover the treatment status of all workers in more than 3,000 workplaces. We first document that employees in workplaces with a high proportion treated co-workers increase their own absence levels significantly. We then examine the heterogeneity of the treatment effect in order to explore what mechanisms are underlying the peer effect. While a strong effect of having a high proportion of treated coworkers is found for the nontreated workers, no significant effects are found for the treated workers. These results suggest that pure altruistic social preferences can be ruled out as the main motivator for the behaviour of a nonnegligible proportion of the employees in our sample.
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Paper provided by IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation in its series Working Paper Series with number
2009:2.
Length: 15 pages Date of creation: 27 Jan 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2009_002
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Find related papers by JEL classification: C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
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