Paolo Naticchioni (University of Roma Tre)
Tito Boeri, Edoardo Di Porto and Vincenzo Scrutinio
This paper presents the first population-wide controlled field experiment on home visits (HV) to check on sick leave in the Italian public sector, where absenteeism is widespread. We leverage unique administrative data on sick leaves and monitoring. Receiving a HV reduces the number of sick leave days in the following 16 months by approximately 8%. This result can be explained by deterrence of opportunistic behavior, as HVs prompt workers to reassess their perceptions of audit risks and sanctions for irregular leave, especially in presence of a double lottery (involving inspections and sanctions). HVs prove to be cost-effective: every Euro spent on the visits leads to at least a 5.1 Euro reduction in sick benefit outlays. The marginal value of public funds (MVPF) is 1.09, significantly lower than MVPF estimates for income taxes in the US. Cost-effectiveness improves when HVs target workers at both ends of the wage distribution.