How Productive Is Workplace Health and Safety?

I. Sebastian Buhai, Elena Cottini, Niels Westergaard-Nielsen

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    In this paper, we investigate the causal impact of workplace health and safety practices on firm performance, using Danish longitudinal matched employer–employee data merged with unique cross-sectional representative firm survey data on work environment conditions. We estimate standard production functions, augmented with workplace environment indicators, addressing both time-invariant and time-varying potentially relevant unobservables in the production process. We find positive and large productivity effects of improved physical dimensions of the health and safety environment, specifically, “internal climate” and “monotonous repetitive work”.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalScandinavian Journal of Economics
    Volume119
    Issue number4
    Pages (from-to)1086-1104
    ISSN0347-0520
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2017

    Keywords

    • Firm performance
    • Job quality
    • Production function estimation
    • Work environment

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