Working Paper: NBER ID: w3213
Authors: Wayne B. Gray; Carol Adaire Jones
Abstract: We examine the impact of OSHA enforcement on company compliance with agency regulations in the manufacturing sector, with a unique plant-level data set of inspection and compliance behavior during 1972-1983, the first twelve years of the agency operation. The analysis suggests that, for an individual inspected plant, the average effect of OSHA inspections during this period was to reduce expected citations by 3.0 or by .36 s.d. The total effect on expected citations of additional inspections can be decomposed into two parts; evaluated at the mean of the sample, 59 percent of the total change in citations occurred due to an increase in the compliance rate; 41 percent was due to a reduction in citations among continuing violators.
Keywords: OSHA; compliance; manufacturing; regulations
JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| OSHA inspections (J28) | expected citations (A14) |
| OSHA inspections (J28) | compliance rates (H26) |
| OSHA inspections (J28) | citations among ongoing violators (K42) |
| compliance rates (H26) | expected citations (A14) |
| citations among ongoing violators (K42) | expected citations (A14) |