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Institutional Change, Compensating Differentials, and Accident Risk in American Railroding, 1892–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Seung-Wook Kim  and
Price V. Fishback
Seung-Wook Kim
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at Chung-Ang University in Korea
Price V. Fishback
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona and Research Economist, National Bureau of Economic Research
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Abstract

The labor markets in the railroad industry went through extensive institutional changes between 1890 and 1945. Federal laws increased railroad employers' liability for workplace accidents in several stages. Unions expanded to cover more occupations. The federal government set railroad wages during World War I and then mediated and arbitrated a large number of collective bargaining disputes between 1920 and 1945. We examine how these changes in institutions affected compensating differentials for fatal and nonfatal accident risk. The increasing role of unionization and government intervention coincided with a decline in the size of compensating differentials.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 796 - 823
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

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