Drivers and frictions of workplace accidents: an empirical investigation of cross-country European heterogeneity

This paper presents an empirical investigation on the determinants of workplace accidents across Europe and focuses on the extent to which production-system characteristics (employment sectoral risk, size of firms, temporary contracts), business cycle and socio-economic factors (GDP, level of investments, unemployment, education) and other territorial controls (crime index) might account for cross-country heterogeneity. We use Eurostat data, and our panel is composed of 27 European countries over the period 2010-2018. Implementing, different functional forms/estimation methodologies (pooled OLS, panel fixed and random effects models, system-GMM and semiparametric fixed effects model), we find robust evidence that productive-system structural characteristics, business cycle controls and the other territorial variables are effective in explaining European cross-country heterogeneity. Moreover, we find evidence of a nonlinear relationship between GDP and occupational accidents. Finally, in a policy implication perspective, our results provide evidence that forms of direct financial support to SMEs investments in OSH (as implemented in Italy with the so-called ISI initiative, launched by the National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work from 2010 onwards) can represent a successful policy tool potentially applicable to other European countries.