In most countries, employers are financially responsible for sick pay during an initial period of a worker’s absence spell, after which the public insurance system covers the bill. Based on an empirical evaluation of a quasi-natural experiment in Norway, where pay liability was removed for...

In this report the authors show that recent attempts to reorganise and cut costs in the Norwegian health care and social services sectors have had the unintended side effects of raising the level of sickness absence and disability among the employees, and that these effects have persisted...

Based on Norwegian register data, we set up a multivariate mixed proportional hazard model (MMPH) to analyze nurses’ pattern of work, sickness absence, nonemployment, and social insurance dependency from 1992 to 2000, and how that pattern was affected by workplace characteristics. The model is...

We show that recent attempts to reorganise and cut costs in the Norwegian health care and social services sectors have had the unintended side effects of raising the level of sickness absence and disability among the employees, and that these effects have persisted several years after completion...

We investigate the impacts of economic incentives on the duration and outcome of temporary disability insurance (TDI) spells. The analysis is based on a large quasi-experiment in Norway, with a complete overhaul of the TDI benefit system. Our findings show that the labor supply of TDI claimants...

Based on administrative register data matched with firms' financial statements and closure data collected from bankruptcy proceedings, we show that a large fraction of Norwegian disability insurance claims can be directly attributed to job displacement and other adverse shocks to employment...

In recent years, a number of welfare state economies, including Norway, have experienced substantial increases in sickness absence. Using longitudinal individual register data for virtually all Norwegian employees, we examine the remarkable rise since the early 1990s, with emphasis on...