The Political Economy of Workers' Compensation in the Early Twentieth-Century

政府的成长是上个世纪美国经济中最戏剧性的变化，也是最不为人所知的变化。虽然大多数研究都集中在联邦政府的增长上，但州政府也迅速扩张，并经常试验后来在联邦一级引入的项目。这项研究的目的是通过分析美国第一个主要社会保险计划--工人补偿的采用情况，更好地了解各州在政府发展中的作用。这项研究将结合对通过工人补偿的时机的宏观分析，以及对几个重要州通过法律的详细和定量的案例研究。将估计不同群体的工人补偿受益或损害的程度，包括不同技能水平的工人、加入工会的工人、不同规模和不同事故经历的雇主、保险公司、纳税人和国家官员。基于这些经验估计，将分析团体和个人如何将他们的预期经济回报转化为政治行动。这项研究很重要，因为它将更好地理解经济和政治制度在美国经济发展中的相互作用。

The growth of Government is the most dramatic, yet least understood, change in the American economy in the last century. While most studies have focused on the growth of the federal government, state governments also expanded rapidly and often experimented with programs that were later introduced at the federal level. The purpose of this research is to better understand the role of the states in the growth of government by analyzing the adoption of workers' compensation, America's first major social insurance program. The research will combine both macro analysis of the timing of adoption of workers' compensation with detailed and quantitative case studies of the passage of the laws in several important states. The extent to which workers' compensation benefitted or harmed various groups will be estimated, including workers of various skill levels, unionized workers, employers of different sizes and different accident experience, insurance companies, taxpayers, and state officials. Based on these empirical estimates, how groups and individuals translated their expected economic returns into political action will be analyzed. This research is important because it will provide a better understanding of the interaction of the economic and political systems in the development of the American economy.