TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fishback,Price V.
AU  - Kantor,Shawn Everett
TI  - Did Workers Pay for the Passage of Workers' Compensation Laws?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4947
PY  - 1994
Y2  - December 1994
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4947
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4947.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Price V. Fishback
Department of Economics
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ  85721
Tel: 520/621-4421
Fax: 520/621-8450
E-Mail: pfishback@eller.arizona.edu

Shawn E. Kantor
School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts
University of California, Merced
5200 N. Lake Road
Merced, CA 95343
Tel: 209-228-2956
Fax: 209-228-4007
E-Mail: skantor@ucmerced.edu
AB  - Market responses to legislative reforms often mitigate the expected gains that reformers promise in legislation.  Contemporaries hailed workers' compensation as a boon to workers because it raised the amount of post-accident compensation paid to injured workers. Despite the large gains to workers, employers often supported the legislation.  Analysis of several wage samples from the early 1900s shows that employers were able to pass a significant part of the added costs of higher post-accident compensation onto some workers in the form of reductions in wages.  The size of the wage offsets, however, were smaller for union workers.
ER  -