Abstract
We investigate whether interventions by (a) medical doctors and (b) occupational specialists are effective in reducing sick leave durations among self-employed workers. Therefore, we exploit unique administrative data comprising all sick leave claims by self-employed workers insured with a major Dutch private insurer between January 2009 and March 2014. We estimate a multivariate duration model dealing with nonrandom selection into the two intervention types by controlling for observable and unobservable claimant characteristics. We find adverse treatment effects for both interventions, irrespective of whether they are started early or (middle) late in the sickness spell.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | e139-e152 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Health Economics (United Kingdom) |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 22 Aug 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2018 |
Funding
The authors acknowledge Achmea for providing the data. In addition, Stijn Baert is grateful to the Department of Economics of the VU University Amsterdam for giving him the opportunity to work on this study as a visiting researcher at the department. Lastly, the authors acknowledge Hans Bloemen, Bart Cockx, Jochen Mierau, Matteo Picchio, and the seminar participants at Aarhus University, Ghent University, and Université Catholique de Louvain for their insightful comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve this study considerably.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Department of Economics | |
| Aarhus Universitet | |
| Universiteit Gent |
Keywords
- dynamic treatment effects
- medical interventions
- moral hazard
- self-employment
- sick leave
