Volume 28, Number 3 (Summer) 1993
Ruser, John W. 1993. "Workers' Compensation and the Distribution of Occupational Injuries." Journal of Human Resources 28(3):593-617.
This paper studies the impact of worker's compensation income benefits on injury rates and on the distribution of injuries by severity. I develop econometric models for correlated counts of injuries that are estimated on a longitudinal data set of 2,798 manufacturing establishments. I find that higher benefits increase the frequencies of most nonfatal injuries, but reduce the frequency of fatalities. Also, higher benefits increase the probability that a given injury involves days away from work, but reduces the chance that it is a fatality or a minor injury.
The author is a Senior Economist in the Office of Economic Research at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This paper was presented under a different title at the 1989 Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society and the 1990 Meeting of the Western Economic Association. The author wishes to thank Jim Brown, Harley Frazis, Steve Miller, and the staff of the Office of Economic Research for helpful comments and suggestions. He would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their comments and for finding some errors in the previous draft. He takes responsibility for all remaining errors. The views expressed are his and do not reflect the views or policies of the BLS.
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