Cyclical Fluctuations in Workplace Accidents

Jan Boone and Jan van Ours

No 627, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper presents a theory and an empirical investigation on cyclical fluctuations in workplace accidents. The theory is based on the idea that reporting an accident dents the reputation of a worker and raises the probability that he is fired. Therefore a country with a high or an increasing unemployment rate has a low (reported) workplace accident rate. The empirical investigation concerns workplace accidents in OECD countries. The analysis confirms that workplace accident rates are inversely related to both the level of unemployment and the change in unemployment. Furthermore, fatal accident rated do not fluctuate over the cycle. We conclude that our empirical analysis is in line with our theory: cyclical fluctuations in workplace accidents have to do with reporting behavior of workers and not with changes in workplace safety.

Keywords: unemployment; workplace accidents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2002-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - revised version published as 'Are recessions good for workplace safety? ' in: Journal of Health Economics, 2006, 25 (6), 1069-1093

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp627.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cyclical Fluctuations in Workplace Accidents (2002)
Working Paper: Cyclical Fluctuations in Workplace Accidents (2002)
Working Paper: Cyclical Fluctuations in Workplace Accidents (2002)
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:iza:izadps:dp627

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().