Worker Absence and Productivity: Evidence from Teaching

By Mariesa A. Herrmann, Jonah E. Rockoff. Journal of Labor Economics, 2012

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A significant amount of work time is lost each year due to worker absence, but evidence on the productivity losses from absenteeism remains scant due to difficulties with identification. We use uniquely detailed data on the timing, duration, and cause of absences among teachers to address many of the potential biases from the endogeneity of worker absence. Our analysis indicates that worker absences have large negative impacts: the expected loss in daily productivity from employing a temporary substitute is on par with replacing a regular worker of average productivity with one at the 10th–20th percentile of productivity.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b3a17ce0a9ded9e755ad254a46ab6f4a2b033e3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

1. Carol A. Woehler
2. Ruzanna Topchyan

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Carol A. Woehler
2. Ruzanna Topchyan

In Social Psychology

1. Carol A. Woehler
2. Ruzanna Topchyan

Citations in the corpus

• Do Teacher Status, Gender, and Years of Teaching Experience Impact Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement? (2020, background): “These do not seem to be the issues that most substitute teachers have concerns with as they most often see their jobs as maintaining order while the regular teacher is out (Herrmann & Rockoff, 2012).”
• Flaking Out: Student Absences and Snow Days as Disruptions of Instructional Time (2014, unknown): “, 2009), this is not a major concern here because weather does not often affect teacher absences (Herrmann and Rockoff, 2012) and”
• Drug Battles and School Achievement: Evidence from Rio de Janeiro's Favelas (2017, background): “scores fade away rapidly (see Kane and Staiger [2008], Jacob et al. [2010], Rothstein [2010], Banerjee et al.”