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Gone Fishing! Reported Sickness Absenteeism And The Weather

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  • Jingye Shi
  • Mikal Skuterud

Abstract

A fundamental challenge in informing employer–employee agency problems is measuring employee shirking activity. We identify the propensity of employees to misreport health in order to exploit favorable weather by linking Canadian weather data and survey data on short‐term spells of sickness absenteeism among indoor workers during the non‐winter months. The results point to a clear tendency for reported sickness absenteeism to rise with the recreational quality of the weather. Comparing across workers suggests larger marginal weather effects where shirking costs are higher, which we show is consistent with employees' marginal utility of outdoor leisure increasing in the interaction of their health and weather quality. We discuss the implications of our findings for flexible vacation policies and survey respondents' trust in the confidentiality guarantees of statistical agencies. (JEL D82, I10, J22)

Suggested Citation

  • Jingye Shi & Mikal Skuterud, 2015. "Gone Fishing! Reported Sickness Absenteeism And The Weather," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 388-405, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:53:y:2015:i:1:p:388-405
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12109
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Good weather and absenteeism
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-12-06 22:01:00

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    Cited by:

    1. Jurek Łukasz, 2023. "The Impact of the Employee’s Personal Characteristics on the Abuse of Sickness Absence: Empirical Evidence From Poland," Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration & Economics, Sciendo, vol. 13(2), pages 60-81.
    2. Laszlo Goerke, 2017. "Sick pay reforms and health status in a unionised labour market," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(2), pages 115-142, May.
    3. Blanchard, Pablo & Burdin, Gabriel & Dean, Andrés, 2025. "Property rights, sick pay and effort supply," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    4. René Böheim & Thomas Leoni, 2020. "Absenteeism on bridging days," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(20), pages 1667-1671, November.
    5. Ciccia, Diego & Distefano, Rosaria & Reito, Francesco, 2022. "The mismatch between potential and actual shirking in a model of bureaucracy," MPRA Paper 115452, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Pierre Brochu & Till Gross & Christopher Worswick, 2020. "Temporary foreign workers and firms: Theory and Canadian evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(3), pages 871-915, August.
    7. Laszlo Goerke & Sabrina Jeworrek, 2021. "Paid vacation use: The role of works councils," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 42(3), pages 473-503, August.
    8. Laszlo Goerke, 2016. "Sick Pay Reforms and Health Status in a Unionised Labour Market," IAAEG Discussion Papers until 2011 201604, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    9. Liu, Haoming & Salvo, Alberto, 2017. "Severe Air Pollution and School Absences: Longitudinal Data on Expatriates in North China," IZA Discussion Papers 11134, IZA Network @ LISER.
    10. Roberto Cellini & Tiziana Cuccia, 2019. "Weather conditions and museum attendance: a case-study from Sicily," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 511-527, June.
    11. Thomas Leoni & René Böheim, 2018. "Fehlzeitenreport 2018. Krankheits- und unfallbedingte Fehlzeiten in Österreich – Präsentismus und Absentismus," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 61487.
    12. Harold E. Cuffe, 2018. "Rain and museum attendance: Are daily data fine enough?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 42(2), pages 213-241, May.
    13. Laszlo Goerke & Sabrina Jeworrek & Markus Pannenberg, 2015. "Trade union membership and paid vacation in Germany," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-26, December.
    14. Philippe Kabore & Nicholas Rivers, 2023. "Manufacturing output and extreme temperature: Evidence from Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(1), pages 191-224, February.
    15. Liu, Haoming & Salvo, Alberto, 2018. "Severe air pollution and child absences when schools and parents respond," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 300-330.
    16. Tamar Kricheli Katz & Tali Regev & Shay Lavie & Haggai Porat & Ronen Avraham, 2020. "Those who tan and those who don’t: A natural experiment on colorism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-14, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

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