Unresolved Conflict in Workers' Compensation: The Impact of Legal Representation on Workers' Compensation Benefits

Bogdan Savych and David Neumark

No 33210, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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 two instruments. The first is the baseline local area attorney involvement rate derived from a subset of claims for fractures, lacerations, and contusions without permanent partial disability and/or lump-sum payments. The second instrument is a delay in the first indemnity payment. Our outcome is the total indemnity benefits that workers receive after their injuries, which captures payments to workers for time lost from work and other adverse effects of an injury. Our analysis of more than 950,000 claims with more than seven days of lost time indicates that attorney involvement substantially increases total indemnity benefits paid to workers.

JEL-codes: I18 J38 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lma
Note: EH LE LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33210.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33210

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33210
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().