Using rich longitudinal matched employer–employee data for Belgium, we provide a first investigation of the impact of sickness absenteeism on firms’ productivity. To do so, we estimate a production function augmented with a firm‐level measure of sickness absenteeism that we constructed from worker‐level information on nonworked hours due to illness or injury. We deal with the endogeneity of inputs and sickness absenteeism by applying a modified version of the semiparametric control function method developed by Ackerberg, Caves, and Fraser (2015), which explicitly takes firm fixed unobserved heterogeneity into account. Our main finding is that, in general, sickness absenteeism substantially dampens firms’ productivity. However, further analyses show that the impact varies according to several workforce and firm characteristics. Sickness absenteeism is more detrimental to firm productivity when absent workers are high tenure or blue collar. Moreover, it is especially harmful to industrial, capital‐intensive, and small enterprises. These findings are consistent with the idea that sickness absenteeism is more problematic when absent workers have in‐depth firm‐/task‐specific knowledge, when the employees’ work is highly interconnected (e.g., along the assembly line), and when firms face more organizational limitations in substituting absent workers.

中文翻译：

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疾病旷工对企业生产率的影响：比利时匹配的雇主-雇员面板数据的新证据

我们使用比利时丰富的纵向匹配雇主-雇员数据，对疾病旷工对企业生产率的影响进行了首次调查。为此，我们估计了生产功能，该功能由公司级别的疾病缺勤度量增强，该度量是根据因疾病或受伤导致的非工作时间的工人级别信息构建的。我们通过应用由Ackerberg，Caves和Fraser（2015）开发的半参数控制函数方法的修改版本来处理输入和疾病缺勤的内生性，该方法明确考虑了固定的固定未观察到的异质性。我们的主要发现是，总体而言，疾病缺勤会大大削弱企业的生产率。但是，进一步的分析表明，影响会因不同的劳动力和公司特征而异。当缺勤的工人是高任期或蓝领时，疾病缺勤对公司的生产率更有害。此外，它对工业，资本密集型和小型企业尤其有害。这些发现与以下观点相一致：当缺勤的工人对公司/任务具有深入的了解时，当员工的工作高度相互关联时（例如沿着装配线），并且当公司面临更多的问题时，缺勤会更加成问题。替代缺工的组织限制。