IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v35y1982i2p235-242.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Influence of Workers' Compensation on Safety Incentives

Author

Listed:
  • James R. Chelius

Abstract

This study examines the impact of workers' compensation benefits on the allocation of resources to injury prevention, using unpublished data from OSHA on injury rates in manufacturing industries within 36 states. The analysis shows that higher compensation benefits are associated with lower severity rates of injury, suggesting that higher benefits induce employers to spend more on the prevention of serious injuries. On the other hand, higher benefits are also associated with higher frequency rates of injury, suggesting that higher benefits induce employees to take less care in preventing less serious injuries. The author suggests ways of resolving this dilemma and stresses that his findings show that decisions about the structure of workers' compensation laws should not be based solely on income security considerations, as they often are.

Suggested Citation

  • James R. Chelius, 1982. "The Influence of Workers' Compensation on Safety Incentives," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 35(2), pages 235-242, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:35:y:1982:i:2:p:235-242
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/35/2/235.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fortin, Bernard & Lanoie, Paul, 1998. "Effects of Workers' Compensation: A Survey," Cahiers de recherche 9816, Université Laval - Département d'économique.
    2. David Card & Brian P. McCall, 1994. "Is Workers' Compensation Covering Uninsured Medical Costs? Evidence from the 'Monday Effect'," Working Papers 706, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    3. Bauer, Thomas K. & Million, Andreas & Rotte, Ralph & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 1998. "Immigration Labor and Workplace Safety," IZA Discussion Papers 16, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Krueger, Alan B. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2002. "Labor supply effects of social insurance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 33, pages 2327-2392, Elsevier.
    5. Butler, Richard J. & Hartwig, Robert P. & Gardner, Harold, 1997. "HMOs, moral hazard and cost shifting in workers' compensation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 191-206, April.
    6. Darius N Lakdawalla & Robert T Reville & Seth A Seabury, 2007. "How Does Health Insurance Affect Workers’ Compensation Filing?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(2), pages 286-303, April.
    7. Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 1985. "Workers' Compensation, Wages, and the Risk of Injury," NBER Working Papers 1538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:35:y:1982:i:2:p:235-242. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.