We estimate the causal effect of attorney involvement on the indemnity benefits workers receive after their injuries. To address the fundamental challenge that claims and injuries may differ on unmeasured dimensions that affect both attorney involvement and benefits received, we propose and use...

Increased job effort can raise productivity and income but put workers at increased risk of illness and injury. We combine Danish data on individuals' health with Danish matched worker-firm data to understand how rising exports affect individual workers' effort, injury, and illness. We find that...

Despite the adoption of no-fault Workers' Compensation legislation in most states, there is substantial litigation over the issue of employer liability for injury claims. We develop a sequential asymmetric information model of liability disputes and estimate the model using data on injury claims...

This study investigates whether minimum wage increases in the United States affect an important non-market outcome: worker health. To study this question, we use data on lesser-skilled workers from the 1993-2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys coupled with differences-in-differences...

In developing countries, most manufacturing firms are small and located in high-density urban areas, often near congested streets. To study the determinants and implications of this location choice, we collect a novel firm survey and detailed air pollution measurements within Ugandan cities. We...

Little is known about how pollution impacts worker health and workplace safety. This paper leverages high-frequency, plausibly exogenous variation in wildfire smoke to estimate the impact of pollution on workplace injuries. Our analysis draws on unique data we construct through linking...

The value of mortality risk reduction is an important component of the benefits of environmental policies. In recent years, the number, scope, and quality of valuation studies have increased dramatically. Revealed-preference studies of wage compensation for occupational risks, on which analysts...

In addition to traditional forms of private and public medical insurance, two other large programs help pay for costs associated with ill health. In 2007, Workers Compensation (WC) insurance provided $55.4 billion in medical care and cash benefits to employees who are injured at work or contract...

A prominent theoretical controversy in the compensating differentials literature concerns unobservable individual productivity. Competing models yield opposite predictions depending on whether the unobservable productivity is safety-related skill or productivity generally. Using five panel waves...

This study compares the impact of OSHA inspections on manufacturing industries using data from three time periods: 1979-85, 1987-91, and 1992-98. We find substantial declines in the impact of OSHA inspections since 1979-85. In the earliest period we estimate that having an OSHA inspection that...