This project will provide new insights into the determinants of compliance with OSHA standards and into the effects of compliance on the total factor productivity and capital investment at inspected establishments. This information can, in turn, be used to estimate the costs of compliance. All of these contribute to our understanding of the OSHA enforcement process, which is arguably the central public policy intervention addressing occupational injuries and illnesses. The knowledge gained can also help OSHA target its enforcement efforts. This project will create a dataset linking information on OSHA inspections from 1972 to the present with confidential establishment-level Census data, the Longitudinal Research Database, which combines economic data from the Census of Manufacturers, conducted every 5 years, and the Annual Survey of Manufacturers. Although a similar dataset has been extensively used to study EPA enforcement over the last decade, this will be the first time it has been used to study OSHA. Until now, studies of the determinants of compliance have used only the information available in OSHA's own inspection data system. No prior studies have been able to use establishment level data to explore the impact of OSHA compliance on plants' productivity. In addition to examining overall patterns of compliance, this research will focus on compliance with health standards, compliance with new standards, and compliance with standards which have been found to be clearly related to the prevention of injuries. Regression analyses will examine a number of different measures of compliance, adding explanatory variables on establishment characteristics (plant age, wage levels, capital investment, and productivity) and firm characteristics (size and profitability) to the variables already in the OSHA file. Regressions will also be used to examine the effects of compliance on capital spending, productivity, and other measures of the establishment' s economic performance. Adjustments to address the potential endogenity of these variables will be carried out. The information on productivity and investment will be used to make estimates of the compliance costs entailed by the lead and cotton dust standards adopted in the late 1970s, and compare them to prospective estimates of those compliance costs derived during the standard-setting process.
