Alfonso Moral

A methodological proposal to evaluate the cost of duration moral hazard in workplace accident insurance

The cost of duration moral hazard in workplace accident insurance has been amply explored by North-American scholars. Given the current context of financial constraints in public accounts, and particularly in the Social Security system, we feel that the issue merits inquiry in the case of Spain. The present research posits a methodological proposal using the econometric technique of stochastic frontiers, which allows us to break down the duration of work-related leave into what we term “economic days” and “medical days”. Our calculations indicate that during the 9-year period spanning 2005–2013, the cost of sick leave amongst full-time salaried workers amounted to 6920 million Euros (in constant 2011 Euros). Of this total, and bearing in mind that “economic days” are those attributable to duration moral hazard, over 3000 million Euros might be linked to workplace absenteeism. It is on this figure where economic policy measures might prove more effective.

Moral Hazard in Monday Claim Filing: Evidence from Spanish Sick Leave Insurance

Abstract The Monday effect on workers’ compensation insurance shows that there is a higher proportion of hard-to-diagnose injuries the first day of the week. The aim of this paper is to test whether the physiological hypothesis or the economic explanation is more satisfactory to understand this Monday effect and, if both are correct, to obtain an estimation of the magnitude of each of them. To do this, we exploit the singular legal regulation of Spanish sick leave benefits and use this country as a “laboratory”. Our econometric analysis detects and measures a hard-to-diagnose reporting gap on Mondays by about 6.5 percentage points due to physiological reasons and up to 1.4 percentage points attributable to moral hazard for those injuries with a short recovery period.

The impact of leisure complementarity on the labour force participation of older males in Spain

This work seeks to gauge the complementarity or shared leisure effect in Spain. The study evidences the importance which the increase in female activity rates has on the decision of their male spouses to prolong their labour market participation. Thus, if active ageing is to be encouraged, vis-à-vis nonearly exit from the labour force of those in the latter stages of their working lives, and if the burden on public pensions is to be alleviated, comprehensive economic policies need to be adopted addressing the family unit of older persons as a whole rather than focusing on each individual member.

Differences between Spanish and Foreign Workers in the Duration of Workplace Accident Leave: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

The main goal of the current work is to analyse differences between the working conditions of national and foreign workers in Spain. For this purpose, we study an important dimension of those working conditions, namely workplace injuries, and more specifically the differences in duration of occupational injury leave as a consequence of work-related accidents. The empirical analysis is carried out using stochastic frontier techniques. This allows a minimum period off work due to merely physiological or medical reasons to be distinguished from an additional period linked to worker behaviour. This latter component measures inefficiency in frontier literature, and is identified in the present work as a relevant indicator of working conditions. The findings reveal that most of the differences observed between national and immigrant workers in the already mentioned duration are a result of the inefficiency term. For the purpose of the current work, this is reflected in poorer working conditions for immigrant workers, particularly for those from less advanced countries.

Youth Employment in the Iberian Countries

Southern European countries have been the countries most affected by the economic crisis, and this has led to very high levels of unemployment. Although unemployment has affected all types of workers, the youth has experienced the highest increase in unemployment rates, even exceeding 30% in countries such as Portugal or Spain. Our aim in this chapter is twofold: first, we analyse the impact of economic downturn on the labour market situation of the youth in these two countries in comparison to Northern and Central European countries. Second, we study the implementation of policies to foster youth employment. In particular, we examine the Youth Guarantee programmes developed following the recommendations by the European Commission. Finally, we compare the performance of both countries in terms of trajectories to the achievement of European 2020 objectives.