Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/87063 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. 08-077/3
Publisher: 
Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam and Rotterdam
Abstract: 
This paper estimates the impact of work environment health and safety practice on firm performance, and examines which firm-characteristic factors are associated with good work conditions. We use Danish longitudinal register matched employer-employee data, merged with firm business accounts and detailed cross-sectional survey data on workplace conditions. This enables us to address typical econometric problems such as omitted variables bias or endogeneity in estimating i) standard production functions augmented with work environment indicators and aggregate employee characteristics and ii) firm mean wage regressions on the same explanatory variables. Our findings suggest that improvement in some of the physical dimensions of the work health and safety environment (specifically, “internal climate” and “repetitive and strenuous activity”) strongly impacts the firm productivity, whereas “internal climate” problems are the only workplace hazards compensated for by higher mean wages.
Subjects: 
occupational health and safety
work environment
production function estimation
firm performance
compensating wage differentials
JEL: 
J28
J31
L23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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