Volume 38, Number 4 (Fall) 2003

Waehrer, Geetha M., and Ted R. Miller. 2003. "Restricted Work, Workers' Compensation, and Days Away from Work." Journal of Human Resources 38(4):.

We use an establishment-based survey of occupational injuries to analyze employers' use of restricted work and its effect on days away from work. Since restricted work provisions vary with the duration and severity of injury, we use its predicted probability in our analysis of days away from work. Higher benefits and lower state waiting periods increase the likelihood of restricted work which substitutes for days away from work especially for hard-to-diagnose injuries. Our results suggest that failure to control for restricted work may yield downward biased estimates of the direct effect of income replacement on work loss.
 

Geetha Waehrer and Ted Miller are researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. They thank John Ruser, Paul Leigh, Les Boden, participants at the 1998 Workers' Compensation Research Group and the 1999 ASSA meetings, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. All errors are the authors' responsibility. This project was supported by grants R01 OH12179 and R01 OH03750 from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.