Swapping Regulation for Litigation: The Effects of Workers' Compensation Opt-Out on the Injury Claims of Large Multi-State Firms

工人赔偿的“大妥协”，即工人放弃起诉雇主的权利，以换取有限的无过错工伤保险，是20世纪最重要的侵权改革之一。然而，由于工人赔偿覆盖范围在美国大多数州是强制性和普遍的，很少有学者将其后果与侵权责任的后果进行比较。从方法上讲，问题在于没有一个易于识别的“控制组”来比较受影响的工人和公司的行为。然而，有一个州——德克萨斯州——提供了一个独特的实验室来进行这种比较。根据德克萨斯州的法律，雇主可以选择不接受工人的赔偿，并丧失侵权豁免权。自上世纪90年代以来，这种被称为“不订阅”的现象在大公司中一直呈上升趋势。有趣的是，尽管没有这样做的法律义务，大多数大的非会员向他们的工人提供工伤计划，实质上复制了工人补偿所提供的福利。本研究是一项计划中的多部分调查的第一阶段，该调查将研究不订阅如何影响大公司职业伤害索赔的频率、成本和持续时间。这类研究必须面对的关键方法论挑战是选择偏差。由于公司不是随机分配到各个行业的，所以公司层面上的差异在订阅公司和非订阅公司之间可能反映了公司之间不可观察到的差异。为了最大限度地减少公司层面自我选择的潜在混淆效应，本研究从美国许多州运营同质设施的大型非订户的不同群体中获得了高度细化的数据。为了利用各州之间的差异，该研究将每个非用户的德克萨斯州工厂的工人与非德克萨斯州工厂的员工进行了比较。与此同时，对于那些保留了拒绝订阅前数据的公司，调查人员还将比较每家公司选择退出日期前后的趋势。

The "great compromise" of workers' compensation, whereby workers relinquished the right to sue their employers in exchange for limited no-fault occupational injury insurance, was one of the most significant tort reforms of the 20th Century. Yet because workers' compensation coverage is compulsory and universal in most U.S. states, few scholars have compared its consequences to those of tort liability. Methodologically, the problem is that there is no readily-identifiable "control group" against which to compare the behavior of affected workers and firms. However, one state--Texas--offers a unique laboratory in which to undertake such comparisons. Under Texas law, employers may opt out of workers' compensation and forfeit tort immunity. This phenomenon, called "nonsubscription," has been on the rise since the 1990s among large firms. Interestingly, despite having no legal obligation to do so, most large nonsubscribers furnish their workers with occupational injury plans that substantially replicate the benefits provided through workers' compensation. This study, the first stage of a planned multi-part investigation into Texas nonsubscription, will examine how nonsubscription affects the frequency, cost, and duration of large firms' occupational injury claims. The key methodological challenge that any study of this type must confront is selection bias. Since firms are not randomly assigned across sectors, firm-level disparities between subscribing and nonsubscribing firms may reflect unobservable differences between firms. To minimize the potentially confounding effects of firm-level self-selection, this study has obtained highly granular data from a diverse group of large nonsubscribers that operate homogenous facilities in many U.S. states. To exploit variation across states, the study compares workers in the Texas facilities of each nonsubscriber to employees in its non-Texas facilities. Meanwhile, for those firms that have retained data from the period prior to nonsubscription, the investigator also will compare trends before and after each firm's date of opt-out.