IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v85y2003i4p923-929.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Workers' Compensation "Reforms," Choice of Medical Care Provider, and Reported Workplace Injuries

Author

Listed:
  • Leslie I. Boden

    (Boston University)

  • John W. Ruser

    (Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Abstract

In the 1990s, many states passed workers' compensation laws to control cost growth. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we determine the impact of these laws on the frequency of reported workplace injuries. In response to restrictions that make it more difficult to file claims, reported days-away-from-work injuries decline, accounting for between 7.0% and 9.4% of the dramatic fall in their frequency in 1991-1997. At the same time, these filing disincentives appear to account for 6.8% of the increase in cases with only restricted work activity, although the evidence is weaker for these injuries. Restricting workers' choice of medical care provider did not appear to reduce the frequency of cases in any nonfatal injury category. © 2003 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Leslie I. Boden & John W. Ruser, 2003. "Workers' Compensation "Reforms," Choice of Medical Care Provider, and Reported Workplace Injuries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 923-929, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:85:y:2003:i:4:p:923-929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/003465303772815826
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. McInerney, Melissa, 2010. "Privatizing public services and strategic behavior: The impact of incentives to reduce workers' compensation claim duration," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 777-789, October.
    2. Erin Todd Bronchetti & Melissa McInerney, 2012. "Revisiting Incentive Effects in Workers' Compensation: Do Higher Benefits Really Induce More Claims?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 286-315, April.
    3. Pedersen, Morten Saaby & Arendt, Jacob Nielsen, 2014. "Bargaining for health: A case study of a collective agreement-based health program for manual workers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 123-136.
    4. Nicole Nestoriak & John Ruser, 2010. "Emerging Labor Market Trends and Workplace Safety and Health," NBER Chapters, in: Labor in the New Economy, pages 425-453, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. MELISSA McINERNEY & KOSALI SIMON, 2012. "The Effect of State Workers’ Compensation Program Changes on the Use of Federal Social Security Disability Insurance," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 57-88, January.
    6. Alison Morantz, 2010. "Opting Out of Workers' Compensation in Texas: A Survey of Large, Multistate Nonsubscribers," NBER Chapters, in: Regulation vs. Litigation: Perspectives from Economics and Law, pages 197-238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Dillender, Marcus, 2015. "The effect of health insurance on workers’ compensation filing: Evidence from the affordable care act's age-based threshold for dependent coverage," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 204-228.
    8. Nan Maxwell & Albert Liu & Nathan Wozny & Caroline Massad Francis, 2013. "Addressing Return-to-Work Issues in the Federal Employees' Compensation Act with Administrative Data," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 8e3f929cbea0422e8272f03ab, Mathematica Policy Research.
    9. Dillender, Marcus & McInerney, Melissa, 2020. "The role of Mexican immigration to the United States in improved workplace safety for natives from 1980 to 2015," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Xuguang (Steve) Guo & John F. Burton Jr., 2010. "Workers' Compensation: Recent Developments in Moral Hazard and Benefit Payments," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 63(2), pages 340-355, January.
    11. Kelly D. Edmiston, 2006. "Workers’ Compensation and State Employment Growth," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 121-145, February.
    12. Andy Yuan & Price V. Fishback, 2020. "Rising Burdens of Proofs and The Grand Bargain of Workers’ Compensation Laws," NBER Working Papers 26980, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Bilgrami, Anam & Cutler, Henry & Sinha, Kompal, 2021. "The impact of harmonising Australia’s workplace health and safety laws on workers compensation," GLO Discussion Paper Series 773, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    14. repec:mpr:mprres:7900 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Bilgrami, A. & Cutler, H. & Sinha, K., 2021. "Do standardised workplace health and safety laws and increased enforcement activities reduce the probability of receiving workers' compensation?," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 21/08, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.

    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:tpr:restat:v:85:y:2003:i:4:p:923-929. 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.