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Should We Let Employers Decide Who Can Return to Work After Being Sick?: Lessons From Belgium’s Reintegration Trajectories

par Ligato, Marina ;Tojerow, Ilan ;Fontenay, Sébastien
Référence Italian Association of Labour Economics Conference
Publication Non publié, 2025-09-18

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Résumé :

This paper evaluates the impact of employer discretion in selecting participantsfor Reintegration Trajectories (RTs) among Disability Insurance (DI) recipients.These programs aim at promoting work-resumption through workplace adaptationsand active employer involvement. Exploiting a 2018 policy change in Belgium thatallowed employers to freely select participants, we use a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to estimate the causal effects of this discretion on employmentoutcomes. Employer-selected participants are 13.1 percentage points less likely toresume work and 19.7 percentage points more likely to remain in DI. We find thatemployers tend to select participants who are older and have longer durations of disability, resulting in reintegration trajectories that are often not initiated due to theinability of these individuals to start work adaptations. In contrast, an event studyreveals that reintegration trajectories initiated by doctors significantly acceleratethe work resumption process among disability insurance (DI) recipients.