Study: Workplace safety inspections save lives, don’t destroy jobs
Research published in Science sheds light on a hot-button political issue: the role and effectiveness of government regulation. Does it kill jobs or protect the public?
The new study, co-authored by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Toffel (mtoffel@hbs.edu), Professor David Levine (levine@haas.berkeley.edu) of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and Boston University doctoral student Matthew Johnson (m.slater.johnson@gmail.com), examines workplace safety inspections conducted by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA). The authors carried out the first evaluation of a “clinical trial” of the state’s mandated randomized inspections to discern their effect on both worker safety and companies’ bottom lines.