 Nonfatal Accident Compensation and the Common Law at the Turn of the CenturyShawn Kantor and Price Fishback The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 1995, vol. 11, issue 2, 406-33 Abstract: We investigate the de facto operation of the employer liability system around the turn of the century with evidence on Michigan workers' nonfatal accident compensation from 1896 to 1903. The results show that the impact of the common-law defenses on accident payments was filtered through a settlement bargaining process affected by legal costs and private information. The probability of receiving compensation rose when the accident was severe enough to raise the worker's expected court award higher than his legal costs. Workers in larger firms and with greater tenure were also more likely to receive compensation. The fellow servant defense may have been less effective for larger employers, while the contributory negligence defense was less effective against experienced workers. On the other hand, employers might have been using accident payments as implicit fringe benefits to lower monitoring costs and to cut employee turnover. Copyright 1995 by Oxford University Press. Date: 1995 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:11:y:1995:i:2:p:406-33 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization is currently edited by Andrea Prat More articles in The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.