Workers’ behavior after safety regulations: Impact evaluation of the Spanish Occupational Safety and Health Act

Pablo Delgado-Cubillo and Ángel Martín-Román ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: While the 1995 Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH) regulation transformed the outlook on workplaces in Spain, characterized by a lack of preventive protection, public statistics have reported an increasing trend in the postregulation workplace accident rates. This study uses microdata from official national statistics to examine the effect of the OSH regulation on the reported accidents while focusing on its severity. Accordingly, we apply a difference-in-difference assessment method where a comparable group is formed by the contemporaneous in itinere accidents (commuting), which are legally and statistically considered work-related accidents but not directly impacted by the OSH regulation, with a focus on the workplace environment. The results reveal that the nonfatal accident rate decreased after the implementation of the regulation. However, when we isolate the effect of the regulation on accidents that usually provoke hard-to-diagnose injuries (dislocations, back pain, sprains, and strains), we obtain a significant increase in the accident rate. Moral hazard mixed effects seem to have played a crucial role in these dynamics through overreporting and/or Peltzman effects, often offsetting accident reduction intended by the OSH regulation.

Keywords: OSH; impact evaluation; moral hazard; difference-in-difference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 H43 I18 J28 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-law and nep-lma
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Working Paper: Workers' behavior after safety regulations: Impact evaluation of the Spanish Occupational Safety and Health Act (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:117284

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