Urban Commuting Time and Sick-Leave Medical License Use: An Empirical Study of Santiago, Chile

37 Pages Posted: 15 Jan 2022

See all articles by Andres Gomez-Lobo

Andres Gomez-Lobo

University of Chile - Department of Economics

Alejandro Micco

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Abstract

We use data from the Chilean unemployment insurance program covering 20% of all formal sector workers to study the impact of commuting time on the likelihood of medical licences sick-leave use in Santiago, Chile. We estimate panel-data probit models for the determinants of medical license behavior using the pseudo-demeaning algorithm and incidental parameter bias correction approach proposed by Stammann, Heiss and McFadden (2016). In some specifications, we follow Anderson, et al. (2018) and use a sub-sample of workers who suffered from mass unemployment to control for possible endogenous job location choice. All our empirical results indicate that longer commuting times are associated with an increase in the probability of sick leave. We also find evidence that mobility infrastructure investments help reduce sick leave behavior. The results of this paper have implications for measuring the social costs of congestion and for the estimation of wider economic benefits of transport projects.

Keywords: sick-leave behavior, transport project appraisal, probit paneldata models, urban mobility

Suggested Citation

Gomez Lobo, Andres and Micco, Alejandro, Urban Commuting Time and Sick-Leave Medical License Use: An Empirical Study of Santiago, Chile. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4009706 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4009706

Andres Gomez Lobo (Contact Author)

University of Chile - Department of Economics ( email )

Diagonal Paraguay 257
Torre 26, Of. 1801
Santiago
Chile

Alejandro Micco

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

No Address Available

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
43
Abstract Views
259
PlumX Metrics