RUI: The Impact of Firm Financial Performance and BankruptcyRisk on Safety Investment

安全已成为一个日益重要的公共政策考虑因素。随着19970年《环境保护法》和《职业安全与健康法》的颁布，健康和安全的工作场所成为国家目标。这个项目的目的是分析公司的财务业绩如何影响工作场所的安全。特别是，开发了一个模型，展示了公司预防事故的激励如何取决于其财务状况。破产的可能性意味着最优的安全投资取决于预期利润、债务负担、出售资产的能力和预期未来利润等财务变量。结果表明，不可能解析地确定这些因素对安全投资的影响的方向和大小。答案必须由经验决定。该项目将使用OSHA记录中的两个工厂级安全绩效指标：损失的工作日和违反安全标准的情况，对公司的财务状况与其在工作场所安全方面的投资之间的关系提供经验估计。这项研究之所以重要，是因为它将产生重要的公共政策影响，尤其是对高杠杆交易的监管资源和政策的有效分配。

Safety has become an increasingly important public policy consideration. With enactment of the Environmental Protection Act and the Occupation Safety and Health Act in 19970, a healthy and safe work place became a national goal. The purpose of this project is to analyze how a firm's financial performance affects work place safety. In particular, a model is developed showing how a firm's incentives for preventing accidents depends on its financial situation. The possibility of bankruptcy means that optimal safety investments depend on such financial variables as expected profits, debt burden, ability to sell assets, and expected future profits. It is shown that it is impossible to determine analytically the direction and magnitude the effect of these factors have on investments in safety. Answers must be determined empirically. This project will provide empirical estimates of the relationship between a firm's financial condition and its investment in work place safety using two plant-level proxies for safety performance form OSHA records: lost workdays and violations of safety standards. This research is important because it will have important public policy implications, most notably for the efficient allocation of regulatory resources and policies towards highly leveraged transactions.