title: Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss.
abstract: Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We analyzed a natural field experiment to examine how workplace safety inspections affected injury rates and other outcomes. We compared 409 randomly inspected establishments in California with 409 matched-control establishments that were eligible, but not chosen, for inspection. Compared with controls, randomly inspected employers experienced a 9.4% decline in injury rates (95% confidence interval = -0.177 to -0.021) and a 26% reduction in injury cost (95% confidence interval = -0.513 to -0.083). We find no evidence that these improvements came at the expense of employment, sales, credit ratings, or firm survival.
authors.affiliation: Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: David I
authors.initials: DI
authors.lastname: Levine
authors.forename: Michael W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Toffel
authors.forename: Matthew S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D000062:Accidents, Occupational / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002140:California; D003132:Commerce; D017281:Cost of Illness; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004651:Employment; D006801:Humans; D007221:Industry / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016555:Matched-Pair Analysis; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D060051:Occupational Injuries / Q000191:economics / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D011897:Random Allocation; D012449:Safety; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits; D014481:United States; D014489:United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration; D014942:Workers' Compensation; D017132:Workplace