OSHA enforcement, industrial compliance and workplace injuries

Author / Creator

Bartel, Ann P

Available as

Online

Summary

"This paper develops and tests a three-equation simultaneous model of OSHA enforcement behavior, industrial compliance and workplace injuries. The enforcement equation is based on the assumption th...

"This paper develops and tests a three-equation simultaneous model of OSHA enforcement behavior, industrial compliance and workplace injuries. The enforcement equation is based on the assumption that OSHA acts as a political institution that gains support through the transfer of wealth from firms to employees; the empirical results are largely consistent with this notion. Contrary to previous work, we find that OSHA enforcement efforts have, indeed, had a statistically significant impact on industrial compliance and, further, that this compliance has led to a statistically significant decrease in worker injuries. The point estimate of the elasticity of the lost workday rate with respect to the OSHA inspection rate is -.04"--NBER website

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