Reported Sickness Absenteeism and the Weather: A Test of a Shirking Model of Efficiency Wages∗

The inherent unobservability of shirking activity presents a serious challenge to obtaining direct evidence of the efficiency wage hypothesis. We begin with a model of shirking absenteeism in which employees’ marginal utility of outdoor leisure is increasing in health. In equilibrium, the positive relation between weather quality and sickness absenteeism reflects the behavior of the inframarginal workers who are the least sick, implying a form of shirking. Using time-use data identifying the weekend and weekday evening outdoor recreational activities of wage and salary workers, we construct an index of weather quality. Linking this index over the summer months with data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS), which distinguishes reasons for part-week absences, we identify a clear tendency for absenteeism for personal reasons to rise with weather quality. However, comparing this relation across workers facing different shirking incentives, such as between salaried employees, who are typically paid for time off, and hourlypaid employees, who are not, offers little evidence to support the efficiency wage hypothesis.