UNIVERSITY OF OSLO HEALTH ECONOMICS RESEARCH PROGRAMME Organisational Change, Absenteeism and Welfare Dependency Knut Røed Elisabeth Fevang The Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research and HERO Working Paper 2005: 9 Organisational Change, Absenteeism and Welfare Dependency Kunt Røed and Elisabeth Fevang Health Economics Research Programme at the University of Oslo HERO 2005 JEL Classification: C14, I38, J28 Keywords: Absenteeism, hazard rate model, NPMLE Acknowledgement This paper is part of a Strategic Institute Program on Labour Market and Pension Research, financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the Norwegian Minis- try of Finance. We have also received financial support from the Health Economics Research Programme at the University of Oslo (HERO). Thanks to Morten Henningsen, Jonas Lager- ström, Karine Nyborg and Oddbjørn Raaum for valuable comments. Also thanks to Morten Henningsen for assistance in the preparation of municipality/county data. Correspondence to: Knut Røed, the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, Gausta- dalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway. E-mail:
[email protected] © 2005 HERO and the authors – Reproduction is permitted when the source is referred to. Health Economics Research Programme at the University of Oslo Financial support from The Research Council of Norway is acknowledged. ISSN 1501-9071, ISBN 82-7756-154-7 2 Abstract 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 ab- sence and disability among the employees, and that these effects have persisted several years after completion of the reorganisation processes.