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Demand Conditions and Worker Safety: Evidence from Price Shocks in Mining by Kerwin Kofi Charles; Matthew S. Johnson; Melvin Stephens; Do Q. Lee is a Economics, Econometrics and Finance article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Demand Conditions and Worker Safety: Evidence from Price Shocks in Mining about?

We investigate how demand conditions affect employers' provision of safety -something about which theory is ambivalent. Positive demand shocks relax financial constraints that limit safety investment, but simultaneously raise the opportunity cost of increasing safety rather than production. We study the U.S. metals mining sector, leveraging exogenous demand shocks from short-term variation in global commodity prices. We find that positive price shocks substantially increase workplace injury rates and safety regulation non-compliance. While these results indicate the general dominance of the opportunity cost effect, shocks that only increase mines' cash-flow lower injury rates, illustrating that financial constraints also affect safety.

Who reads Demand Conditions and Worker Safety: Evidence from Price Shocks in Mining?

Author

Kerwin Kofi Charles; Matthew S. Johnson; Melvin Stephens; Do Q. Lee

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published

2022

Language

EN

Field

Economics, Econometrics and Finance (Social Sciences)