TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gray,Wayne B.
AU  - Scholz,John T.
TI  - Do OSHA Inspections Reduce Injuries? A Panel Analysis
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3774
PY  - 1991
Y2  - July 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3774
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3774.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Wayne B. Gray
Department of Economics
Clark University
950 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01610
Tel: 508/793-7693
Fax: 508/793-8849
E-Mail: WGRAY@CLARKU.EDU
AB  - Using data on injuries and OSHA inspections for 6,842 large manufacturing plants between 1979 and 1985, we find evidence that OSHA inspections significantly reduce injuries. This effect comes exclusively from inspections that impose penalties, inspections which do not impose penalties appear to have no effect on injuries. Plants which are inspected (and penalized) in a given year experience a 22 percent decline in their injuries during the following few years. In our sample, total OSHA enforcement is predicted to have reduced injuries by about 2 percent. We take advantage of the panel nature of our data to test for a number of potential biases: autocorrelated injuries, plant-specific fixed-effects which are correlated with both inspections and injuries, and endogeneity of inspections (injuries causing inspections). These biases lead us to use the percentage change in injuries, rather than injury levels, as the dependent variable for our estimation. Our analysis shows that the estimated effect of inspections on the percentage change in injuries is not significantly affected by these biases, and thus seems to reflect a 'deterrence' effect of OSHA inspections on injuries.
ER  -