Firms and mental health

Category: Applied Microeconomics and Organization Seminar
When: 21 April 2021
, 15:00
 - 16:00

Title: Firms and mental health

Abstract: This paper explores the extent to which firm-based factors affect workers' mental health. We use a novel dataset on prescription anti-depressant and anxiety drugs for the population of workers in Denmark over 13 years, and link it to the employer-employee dataset tracking 2.6 million workers across over 35,000 firms over time. Using a two-way fixed effect model, we find firms account for about 30 percent of variation in workers' drug use. Further, we use an event study design to estimate the degree of convergence in drug use after a move into a new firm, and find that workers converge to higher levels of usage at much higher rates than to lower levels of usage. After three years, workers who move into higher-usage firms converge to the new average usage level by as much as 25 percent.

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