Causes and Effects of Compliance with OSHA Standards

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目将对符合OSHA标准的决定因素以及对被检查机构的全要素生产率和资本投资的影响提供新的见解。反过来，这些信息可用于估计遵从性的成本。所有这些都有助于我们对OSHA执行过程的理解，这可以说是解决职业伤害和疾病的中央公共政策干预。所获得的知识还可以帮助OSHA确定其执行工作的目标。

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.