TY  - JOUR
AU  - Acemoglu,Daron
AU  - Angrist,Joshua
TI  - Consequences of Employment Protection?  The Case of the Americans with  Disabilities Act
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6670
PY  - 1998
Y2  - July 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6670
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6670.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daron Acemoglu
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-380B
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-1927
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: daron@mit.edu

Joshua Angrist
Department of Economics
MIT, E52-353
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8909
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: angrist@mit.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1998-12-01
AB  - The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to accommodate disabled workers and outlaws discrimination against the disabled in hiring, firing, and pay.  Although the ADA was meant to increase employment of the disabled, it also increases costs for employers.  The net theoretical impact turns on which provisions of the ADA are most important and how responsive firm entry and exit is to profits.  Empirical results using the CPS suggest that the ADA had a negative effect on the employment of disabled men of all working ages and disabled women under age 40. The effects appear to be larger in medium size firms, possibly because small firms were exempt from the ADA.  The effects are also larger in states where there have been more ADA-related discrimination charges.  Estimates of effects on hiring and firing suggest the ADA reduced hiring of the disabled but did not affect separations.  This weighs against a pure firing-costs interpretation of the ADA.  Finally, there is little evidence of an impact on the nondisabled, suggesting that the adverse employment consequences of the ADA have been limited to the protected group.
ER  -