Causes and Effects of Compliance with OSHA Standards

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目将提供新的见解的决定因素遵守OSHA标准和遵守全要素生产率和资本投资的影响，在检查机构。这些信息又可用于估计遵守的成本。所有这些都有助于我们理解OSHA的执行过程，这可以说是解决职业伤害和疾病的中央公共政策干预。所获得的知识也可以帮助OSHA针对其执法工作。 该项目将创建一个数据集，将1972年至今的OSHA检查信息与机密的企业级人口普查数据、纵向研究数据库（Longitudinal Research Database）联系起来，该数据库将每5年进行一次的制造商普查和制造商年度调查的经济数据结合起来。 尽管在过去十年中，类似的数据集已被广泛用于研究EPA的执法情况，但这将是第一次用于研究OSHA。到目前为止，对合规性决定因素的研究只使用了OSHA自己的检查数据系统中的信息。以前没有研究能够使用企业级数据来探索OSHA合规性对工厂生产力的影响。 除了检查总体的遵守模式，这项研究将集中在遵守健康标准，遵守新的标准，并遵守标准，已被发现是明确相关的伤害预防。 回归分析将检查许多不同的合规措施，在OSHA文件中已有的变量中添加有关企业特征（工厂年龄，工资水平，资本投资和生产率）和企业特征（规模和盈利能力）的解释变量。回归也将被用来检查遵守对资本支出、生产率和企业经济绩效的其他衡量标准的影响。将针对这些变量的潜在内在性进行调整。 关于生产力和投资的信息将用于估计1970年代末通过的铅和棉尘标准所需的履约成本，并将其与标准制定过程中得出的履约成本预期估计数进行比较。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will provide new insights into the determinants of compliance with OSHA standards and into the effects of compliance on the total factor productivity and capital investment at inspected establishments. This information can, in turn, be used to estimate the costs of compliance. All of these contribute to our understanding of the OSHA enforcement process, which is arguably the central public policy intervention addressing occupational injuries and illnesses. The knowledge gained can also help OSHA target its enforcement efforts. This project will create a dataset linking information on OSHA inspections from 1972 to the present with confidential establishment-level Census data, the Longitudinal Research Database, which combines economic data from the Census of Manufacturers, conducted every 5 years, and the Annual Survey of Manufacturers. Although a similar dataset has been extensively used to study EPA enforcement over the last decade, this will be the first time it has been used to study OSHA. Until now, studies of the determinants of compliance have used only the information available in OSHA's own inspection data system. No prior studies have been able to use establishment level data to explore the impact of OSHA compliance on plants' productivity. In addition to examining overall patterns of compliance, this research will focus on compliance with health standards, compliance with new standards, and compliance with standards which have been found to be clearly related to the prevention of injuries. Regression analyses will examine a number of different measures of compliance, adding explanatory variables on establishment characteristics (plant age, wage levels, capital investment, and productivity) and firm characteristics (size and profitability) to the variables already in the OSHA file. Regressions will also be used to examine the effects of compliance on capital spending, productivity, and other measures of the establishment' s economic performance. Adjustments to address the potential endogenity of these variables will be carried out. The information on productivity and investment will be used to make estimates of the compliance costs entailed by the lead and cotton dust standards adopted in the late 1970s, and compare them to prospective estimates of those compliance costs derived during the standard-setting process.