IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v21y2019i2p307-345..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Asymmetric Effects on Fatality Rates of Changes in Workers’ Compensation Laws

Author

Listed:
  • Elissa Philip Gentry
  • W Kip Viscusi

Abstract

With irreversible investments in safety, changes in workers’ compensation laws should affect employer incentives asymmetrically: increases in workers’ compensation generosity should cause employers to invest more in safety, but comparable decreases might not cause them to disinvest in existing precautionary programs or equipment. Although maximum weekly benefits caps have been fairly stable, state laws have expanded or restricted workers’ compensation on multiple other dimensions. State laws may impose new requirements regarding burdens of proof, access to medical care, and the duration of benefits. This article estimates the effect of changes in these more comprehensive measures of workers’ compensation laws on workplace safety. Using confidential, restricted data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, the article finds that increases in workers’ compensation generosity lead to a significant decrease in fatality rates, while decreases in workers’ compensation generosity do not significantly increase fatality rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Elissa Philip Gentry & W Kip Viscusi, 2019. "Asymmetric Effects on Fatality Rates of Changes in Workers’ Compensation Laws," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 21(2), pages 307-345.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:21:y:2019:i:2:p:307-345.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahz007
    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. Zabinski, Zenon & Black, Bernard S., 2022. "The deterrent effect of tort law: Evidence from medical malpractice reform," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. 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.

    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:oup:amlawe:v:21:y:2019:i:2:p:307-345.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    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.