Workers' Compensation Insurance, Experience-Rating, and Occupational Injuries

Abstract

This article examines how an increase in workers' compensation indemnity benefits affects injury rates when firms are experience-rated to varying degrees. The theoretical model shows that an increase in benefits has a smaller effect on injury rates in more highly experience-rated firms. Since an institutional characteristic of workers' compensation insurance is that larger firms tend to be more highly experience-rated, the empirically testable hypothesis is that there is a smaller relationship between benefits and injury rates in larger firms. The hypothesis is tested with injury rate regressions estimated by using data on 25 three-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for the years 1972-1979. Support for the hypothesis is found when the frequency of all injuries is the dependent variable, but the evidence for the hypothesis is less strong when the dependent variable is the frequency of lost-workday injuries.