TY - JOUR KW - Absence KW - Substitutability KW - Productivity KW - Teachers N2 - Teacher absence is a widespread phenomenon, but little is known about its effects on teacher productivity and schools? strategies to cope with this temporary disruptive event through substitute teachers. Using a unique French administrative dataset matching, for each absence spell, each missing secondary school teacher to her substitute teacher, I find that, on average, teacher absence reduces pupil test scores by around 0.40% of a standard deviation. On average, substitute teachers are unable to mitigate this negative effect. However, there is substantial heterogeneity depending on the type of substitute teacher: certified substitute teachers are able to compensate for up to 25% of this negative impact, while non-certified substitute teachers have no statistically significant effect. A1 - Benhenda, A AV - public UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102167 Y1 - 2022/06// ID - discovery10149567 N1 - This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher?s terms and conditions. TI - Absence, substitutability and productivity: Evidence from teachers VL - 76 JF - Labour Economics PB - Elsevier BV ER -